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THE 



DAWN OF HISTORY: 



%n ^ntxcfottttian to H«-Ji»tonc Sitttw. 



/ ET)ITED BY 



C. R KEARY, M.A., 

H ■ „ * ._ _ 



OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 




LONDON : 

MOZLEY AND SMITH, 

6, PATEENOSTEE EOW. 

1878. 






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LONDON : 
E. CI.AY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, 

BREAD STREET HILL, E.C. 



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PREFACE. 

The advance of pre-historic study has been during the 
last ten years exceptionally rapid ; and, considering upon 
how many subsidiary interests it touches, questions of 
politics, of social life, of religion almost, the science of 
pre-historic archaeology might claim to stand in rivalry 
with geology as the favourite child of this century ; as 
much a favourite of its declining years as geology was of 
its prime. But as yet, it will be confessed, we have little 
popular literature upon the subject, and that for want of 
it the general reader is left a good deal in arrear of the 
course of discovery. His ideas of nationalities and kin- 
dredship among peoples is, it may be guessed, still hazy. 
We still hear the Eussians described as Tartars : and the 
notion that we English are descendants of the lost Israel- 
itish tribes finds innumerable supporters. I am told that 
a society has been formed in London for collecting proofs 
of the more than Ovidian metamorphosis. The reason of 
this public indifference is very plain. Pre-historic science 
has not yet passed out of that early stage when workers 
are too busy in the various branches of the subject to 



IV PREFACE. 

spare much time for a comparison of the results of their 
labours ; when, one may say, fresh contributions are 
pouring in too fast to be placed upon their proper shelves 
in the storehouse of our knowledge. In such a state 
of things the reader who is not a specialist is under 
peculiar disadvantages for a discovery of what has been 
done. He stands bewildered, like the sleeping partner 
in a firm, to whom no one — though he is after all the 
true beneficiary — explains the work which is passing 
before his eyes. 

It will not be thought a misplaced object to attempt 
some such explanation, and that is the task of the 
following chapters. And as at some great triumph of 
mechanism and science — a manufactory, an observatory, 
an ironclad, — a junior clerk or a young engineer is told off 
to accompany the intelligent visitor and explain the work- 
ings of the machinery ; or as, if the simile serve better, in 
those cities which are sought for their treasures of art and 
antiquity, the lower class of the population become self- 
constituted into guides to beauties which they certainly 
neither helped to create nor keep alive ; so this book offers 
itself to the interested student as a guide over some parts 
of the ground covered by pre-historic inquiry, without ad- 
vancing pretensions to stand beside the works of specialists 
in that field. The peculiar objects kept in view have been, 
to put the reader in possession of (1) the general results up 
to this time attained, the chief additions which pre-historic 
science has made to the sum of our knowledge, even if this 
knowledge can be given only in rough outline ; (2) the 
method or mechanism of the science, the way in which it 



PKEFACE. V 

pieces together its acquisitions, and argues upon the facts 
it has ascertained; and (3) to put this information in 
a form which might be attractive and suitable to the 
general reader. 

The various labours of a crowd of specialists are needed 
to give completeness to our knowledge of primitive man, 
and it is scarcely necessary to say that there are a hundred 
questions which in such a short book as this have been 
left untouched. The intention has been to present those 
features which can best be combined to form a continuous 
panorama, and also to avoid, as far as possible, the 
subjects most under controversy. No apology surely is 
needed for the joint character of the work : as in every 
chapter the conclusions of many different and sometimes 
contradictory writers had to be examined and compared, 
and as these chapters, few as they are, spread over various 
special fields of inquiry. 

It is to be hoped that some readers to whom pre- 
historic study is a new thing may be sufficiently interested 
in it to desire to continue their researches. Tor the assist- 
ance of such, lists are given, at the end, of the chief autho- 
rities consulted on the subject of each chapter, with some 
notes upon questions of peculiar interest. 

The vast extent of the field, the treasures of know- 
ledge which have been already gathered, and the harvest 
which is still in the ear, impress the student more and 
more the deeper he advances into the study. Surely, if 
from some higher sphere, beings of a purely spiritual 
nature — nourished, that is, not by material meats and 
drinks, but by ideas — look down upon the lot of man, they 



vi PREFACE. 

must be before everything amazed at the complaints of 
poverty which rise up from every side. When every 
stone on which we tread can yield a history, to follow up 
which is almost the work of a lifetime ; when every word 
we use is a thread leading back the mind through centuries 
of man's life on earth ; it must be confessed that, for riches 
of any but a material sort, for a wealth of ideas, the mind's 
nourishment, there ought to be no lack. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE I. 

PACK 
THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN [EDITOR] 1 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SECOND STONE AGE [EDITOR] - . . . 18 

CHAPTER. III. 

THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE [EDITOR] '. . 34 

CHAPTER IV. 

FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE [EDITOR] 50 

CHAPTER V. 

THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD [EDITOR] 68 

CHAPTER VI. 

EARLY SOCIAL LIFE [il. M. KEARY] 82 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

HAGE 
THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY [H. M. KEARY] 98 

CHAPTER VIII. 

RELIGION [A. KEARY] 1° 9 

CHAPTER IX. 

ARYAN RELIGIONS [EDITOR] 12S 

CHAPTER X. 

THE OTHER WORLD [EDITOR] 14S 

CHAPTER XI. 

MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES [EDITOR] . . . ' 159 

CHAPTER XII. 

PICTURE WRITING [A. KEARY] I' 8 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THONETIC WRITING [A. KEARY] 191 

CHAPTER XIV. 

202 



CONCLUSION [H. KEARY AND EDITOR] 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES 213 



THE DAWK OF HISTORY. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN. 

When St. Paulinus canie to preach Christianity to the people of 
ISforthumbria, King Eadwine (so runs the legend) being minded 
to hear him, and wishing that his people should do so too, called 
together a council of his chief men and asked them whether 
they would attend to hear what the saint had to tell; and one 
of the king's thegns stood up and said, " Let us certainly hear 
what this man knows, for it seems to me that the life of man 
is like the flight of a sparrow through a large room, where 
you, King, are sitting at supper in winter, while storms of rain 
and snow rage abroad. The sparrow, I say, flying in at one 
door and straightway out again at another is, while within, safe 
from the storm ; but soon it vanishes out of sight into the 
darkness whence it came. So the life of man appears for a 
short space ; but of what went before, or what is to follow, 
we are always ignorant." 1 This wise and true saying of the 
Saxon thegn holds good too for the human race as far as 
its progress is revealed to us by history. We can watch 
this progress through a brief interval — for the period over 
which real, continuous authentic history extends ; and beyond 
that is a twilight space, wherein, amid many fantastic shapes 
of mere tradition or mythology, here and there an object or 

1 Bseda, ii. 13. 



i 

2 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

an event stands out more clearly, lit up by a gleam from the 
sources of more certain knowledge which we possess. 

To draw with as much accuracy as may be the outline of 
these shapes out of the past is the business of the pre-historic 
student ; and to assist him in his task, what has he t First, 
he has the Bible narrative, whei'ein some of the chief events 
of the world's history are displayed, but at uncertain distances 
apart ; then we have the traditions preserved in other writings, 
in books, or on old temple stones — in these the truth has 
generally to be cleared from a mist of allegory, or at least of 
mythology. And, lastly, besides these conscious records of 
times gone by, we have other dumb memorials, old buildings 
— cities or temples — whose makers are long since forgotten, 
old tools or weapons, buried for thousands of years, to come 
to light in our days ; and again, old words, old beliefs, old 
customs, old arts, old forms of civilization which have been 
unwittingly handed down to us, can all, if we know the art 
to interpret their language, be made to tell us histories of the 
antique world. It is, then, no uninteresting study by which 
we learn how to make these silent records speak. "Of man's 
activity and attainment," finely says Carlyle, "the chief 
results are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in tradition only : 
such are his Forms of Government, with the Authority they 
rest on ; his Customs or Fashions both of Cloth -habits and 
Soul-habits ; much more his collective stock of Handicrafts, 
the whole Faculty he has acquired of manipulating nature — 
all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, 
cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, 
spirit like, on impalpable vehicles from Father to Son ; if you 
demand sight of them they are nowhere to be met with. 
Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, even 
from Cain and Tubalcain downwards ; but where does your 
accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic and other Manufac- 
turing skill lie warehoused 1 It transmits itself on the 
atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by 
Vision) ; it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual 
sort." 

How many of these intangible spiritual possessions must 
man have acquired before he has learned the art of writing 
history, and so of keeping a record of what had gone before ; 
how much do we know that any individual race of men has 
learned before it brimrs itself forward with distinctness in 



THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN. 3 

this way. For as a first condition of all man must have learned 
to "write, and writing, as we shall hereafter see, is a slowly- 
developing art, which man acquired by ages of gradual 
experiment. His language, too, must ere this have reached a 
state of considerable cultivation, and it will be our object in 
the course of these papers to show through what a long history 
of its own the language of any nation must go before it 
becomes fit for the purposes of literature — through how many 
changes it passes, and what a story it reveals to us by every 
change. And then, again, before a nation can have a history 
it must be a nation, must have a national life to record ; that 
is to say, the people who compose it must have left the simple 
pastoral state which belongs to the most primitive ages, must 
have drawn closer the loose bonds which held men together 
under the conditions of a patriarchal society, and constituted 
a more permanent system of society. Whether under the 
pressure of hostile nations, or only from the growth of a 
higher conception of social life, the nation has to rise from 
out a mere collection of tribes, until the head of the family 
becomes the king — the rude tents grow into houses and 
temples, and the pens of their sheepfolds into walled cities, 
like Corinth or Athens or Rome. Such changes as these 
must be completed before history comes to be written, and 
with such changes as these, and with a thousand others, 
changes and growths in Art, in Poetry, in Manufactures, in 
Commerce, and in Laws, the pre-historical student has to deal. 
On all these subjects we shall have something to say. 

Before, however, we enter upon any one of these it is right 
that we remind the reader — and remind him once for all — that 
our knowledge upon all these points is but partial and uncertain, 
and never of such a character as will allow us to speak with 
dogmatic assurance. Our information can necessarily never 
be direct ; it can only be built upon inferences of a higher or 
lower degree of probability. As, however, it is a necessity of 
our minds that from the information which we possess we 
must form an unbroken panorama, we shall do this freely and 
without danger of harm, so long as we are ready to modify or 
enlarge it when more knowledge is forthcoming. As the eye 
can in a moment supply the deficiencies of some incompleted 
picture, a landscape of which it gets only a partial glance, or 
a statue which has lost a feature, so the mind selects from its 
knowledge those facts which form a continuous story, and 

B 2 



4 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

loses those which are known only as isolated fragments. 
Set a practised and an unpractised draughtsman to draw a 
circle, and we may Avitness how differently they go to work. 
The second never takes his pencil off the paper, and pro- 
duces his effect by one continuous line, which the eye has 
no choice but at once to condemn as incomplete. The wiser 
artist proceeds by a number of short consecutive strokes, 
splitting up, as it were, his divergence over the whole length 
of the figure he is drawing, and so allows the eye, or perhaps 
one should rather say the mind, by that faculty it has, to 
select the complete figure which it can conceive more easily 
than express. No one of the artist's strokes is the true 
fraction of a circle, but the result is infinitely more satis- 
factory than if he had tried to make his pencil follow un- 
swervingly the curve he wished to trace. Or again, notice 
how a skilful draughtsman will patch up by a number of small 
strokes any imperfect portion of a curve he is drawing, and 
we have another like instance of this selective faculty of the 
eye or of the mind. Just in the same way is it with memory ; 
our ideas must be carried on continuously, we cannot 
afford to remember spaces and blanks. Thus in the Bible 
narrative, wherein, as has before been said, certain events of 
the world's history are related with distinctness, but where as 
a rule nothing is said of the times which intervened between 
them, we are wont to make very insufficient allowance for 
these unmentioned times, and form for ourselves a rather 
arbitrary picture of the real course of things, fitting two 
events close on to one another which were really separated 
by long ages. To correct this view, to enlarge the series of 
known facts concerning the early history of the human race, 
comes in pre-historic inquiry ; and again, to correct the 
picture we now form, doubtless fresh information will continue 
to pour in. All this is no reason why we should pronounce 
our picture to be untrue, it is only incomplete. We must be 
always ready to enlarge it, and to fill in the outlines, but still 
we can only remember the facts which we have already 
acquired, if we look at them, not as fragments only, but 
as a complete whole. 

In representing, therefore, in the following chapters the 
advance of the human race in the discovery of all those arts 
and faculties which go to make up civilization as a continuous 
progress, it will not be necessary to pause and remind the 



THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN". 5 

reader in every case that these steps of progress which seem 
to spread themselves out so clearly before us have been made 
in an uncertain manner, sometimes rapidly, sometimes very 
slowly and painfully, sometimes by immense strides, some- 
times by continual baitings and goings backwards and for- 
wards. On the whole, our history will be a history of events 
rather than a strictly chronological one, just as the periods 
of geology are not measured by days and years, but by the 
mutations through which our solid-seeming earth has passed. 

First we turn to what must needs be our earliest inquiry 
■ — the search after the oldest traces of man which have been 
found upon the earth. It has been said that one of the first 
fruits of knowledge is to show us our own ignorance, and 
certainly in the early history of the world and of man there 
is nothing which science points out so clearly as the vast 
silent periods whereof until recently we had no idea. It is 
difficult for us of the present age to remember how short 
a time it is since all our certain knowledge, touching the earth 
on which we live, lay around that brief period of its existence 
during which it has come under the notice and the care of 
man. When all we knew of Europe, and especially of our own 
islands, belonged to the comparatively short time during Avhich 
they have been known to history, we had in truth much 
to wonder at in the political changes they have undergone, 
and our imaginations could be busy with the contrast between 
the unchanged features of our lands and seas and the ever- 
varying character of those who dwelt upon or passed over 
them. It is interesting to think that on such a river bank or 
on such a shore Caesar or Charlemagne have actually stood, and 
that perhaps the grass or flowers or shells under their feet 
looked just the same as they do now, that the waves beat upon 
the strand in the same cadence, or the water flowed by with 
the same trickling sound. But when we open the pages of 
geology, we have unrolled before us a history of the earth 
itself, extending over periods compared with which the longest 
epoch of what is commonly called history seems scarcely more 
than a day, and of mutations in the face of nature so grand 
and awful that as we reflect upon them, forgetting for an 
instant the' enormous periods required to bring these changes 
about, they sound like the fantastic visions of some seer, 
telling in allegorical language the history of the creation and 



G THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

destruction of the world. Of such changes, not the greatest, 
but the most interesting to the question we have at present in 
hand, were those vicissitudes of climate which followed upon 
the time when the formation of the crust of the earth had 
been practically completed. We learn of a time when, in- 
stead of the temperate climate which now favours our country, 
these islands, with the whole of the north of Europe, were 
wrapped in one impenetrable sheet of ice. The tops of our 
mountains, as well as of those of Scandinavia and the north of 
continental Europe, bear marks of the scraping of this enor- 
mous glacier, which must have risen to a height of two or 
three thousand feet. Not a single green thing, therefore, 
might be seen between our latitudes and the pole, while the 
ice-sheet, passing along the floor of the North Sea, united 
these islands with Scandinavia and spread far out into the 
deep waters of the Atlantic. For thousands of years such a 
state of things endured, but at last it slowly passed away. As 
century followed century the glacier began to decrease in size. 
From being colder than that of any explored portion of our 
hemisphere, the climate of northern Europe began to amend, 
until at last a little land became visible, which was covered 
first with lichens, then with thicker moss, and then with 
grass ; then shrubs began to grow, and they expanded into 
trees and the trees into forests, while still the ice-sheet went 
on decreasing, until now the glaciers remained only in the 
hills. Animals returned from warmer climates to visit our 
shores. The birds and beasts and fishes of the land and sea 
were not much different from those which now inhabit there ; 
the species were different, but the genera were for the most 
part the same. Everything seemed to have been preparing 
for the coming of man, and it is about this time that we find 
the earliest traces of his presence upon earth. 

We may try and imagine what was the appearance of 
the world, and especially of Europe — for it is in Europe 
that most of these earliest traces of our race have as yet been 
found, though all tradition and likelihood point out man's 
first home to have been in Central Asia — when we suppose 
that man first appeared upon these western shores. At this 
time the continent of Europe stood at a higher level than it 
does now. The whole of the North Sea, even between Scot- 
land and Denmark, is not more than fifty fathoms, or three 
hundred feet deep, while the Irish Sea is not more than sixty 



THE EAELIEST TEACES OF MAN. 7 

fathoms ; and at this period undoubtedly the British isles, 
besides being all joined together, formed part of the main- 
land, not by being united to France only, but by the presence 
of dry land all the way from Scotland to Denmark, over all 
that area now called the German Ocean. Our Thames and 
our other eastern rivers were then but tributaries of one large 
stream, which bore through this continent, and up into the 
northern seas, their waters united with those of the Rhine, 
and perhaps of the Weser and the Elbe. The same upheaval 
turned into land a portion of the Atlantic Ocean, extending 
from Spain and Africa out as far as the Azores and the 
Canaries. The north of Africa was joined on to this continent 
and to Spain, for the narrow straits of Gibraltar had not yet 
been formed ; but a great sea stood where we now have the 
Great Sahara, and joined the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, 
while a great Mediterranean Sea stood in Central Asia, and has 
left no more than traces in the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Aral. 

We have to look at our maps to see the effect of 
these changes in the appearance of Europe ; and there were 
no doubt other internal changes in the appearances of the 
countries themselves. The glaciers were not yet quite gone, 
and their melting gave rise to enormous rivers which flowed 
from every bill. Our little river the Ouse, for instance, which 
flows out through Norfolk into the Wash, was then probably 
many miles broad. Vast forests grew upon the banks of the 
rivers, and have left their traces in our peat formations, and 
in these forests roamed animals unknown to us. Of these the 
most notable was the mammoth {Elephas primigenius, in the 
language of the naturalists), a huge, maned elephant, whose 
skeleton and gigantic tusks are conspicuous in some of our 
museums, and who has given his name to this the earliest age 
of man's existence : it is called the Mammoth Age of man. 
With the mammoth, too, lived other species of animals, which 
are either now extinct, or have since been driven from our 
latitudes ; the woolly rhinoceros, the cave lion, the cave bear, 
the Lithuanian bison, the urus, the reindeer, and the musk- 
ox. It is with the remains of these animals, in the old beds of 
these great rivers, that we find the earliest tools and weapons 
manufactured by human hands. 

Very simple and rude are these drift implements, as they 
are called, from their being found buried in the sand and 
shingle which were formed by river drifts. We who are so 



8 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

habituated to the employment of metal, cither in the manu- 
facture or the composition of every article which meets our 
eye, can scarcely realize that man lived long ages on the earth 
before the metals and minerals, its hidden treasures, were 
revealed to him. This pen I write with is of metal, or, were it 
a quill, it would still have been shaped by the use of steel ; 
the rags of which this paper is made up have been first cut by 
metal knives, then bleached by the mineral chlorine, then torn 
on a metal cylinder, then thrown into a vat, which was either 
itself of metal, or had been shaped by metal tools, then drawn 
on a wire-cloth, &c, and so in everything which is made we 
trace the paramount influence of man's discoveries beneath the 
surface of the ground. But primitive man could profit by no 
such inherited knowledge, and had only begun to acquire some 
powers which he could transmit to his own descendants. For 
his tools he need look to the surface of the earth only ; and 
the hardest substances he could find were stones. Man's first 
implements, therefore, were stone implements, and conse- 
quently the earliest epoch of man's life, the epoch during 
which he was still ignorant of the use of metals, is called 
the Stone Age. And it may be as well to say at once that this 
age was of very great duration, and may be divided into two 
distinct periods — the old stone (Palaeolithic) epoch, which is 
distinguished by the fact that the stone implements are never 
polished, and the new stone (Neolithic) period, also called the 
polished stone age, of which we shall have to speak later on. 

At present we have got no further than the old-stone age 
implements, and of these the ones which seem to be the 
earliest of all are those which are found in the river drifts. 
These consist only of stones, generally flints, for had there 
been implements of wood or bone, they would not have en- 
dured in that position. By the rudeness and uniformity of 
their shapes, as contrasted even with the stone implements of 
a later age in the world's history, they testify to the simplicity 
of those who manufactured them. They have for the most part 
only two distinctive types ; they are either of a long, pear- 
shaped make, narrowed almost to a point at the thin end, and 
adapted, we may suppose, for boring holes, while the broad 
end of the pear was pressed against the palm of the hand ; 
and secondly, of a sort of oval form, having one side of the 
oval flat and fit to press against the hand or fit into a cleft 
stick, and the other side sharpened to an edge, the whole form 



THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN". 9 

being in fact that of an oval-shaped wedge, and the implement 
itself used probably for all sorts of cutting or scraping. A 
variety of this last implement has two cutting edges, and 
being also of rather a tongue-like shape, was called by the 
French workmen langue-de-chat. Some have supposed that 
stones of this last form were used, as similar ones are used by 
the Esquimaux to this day, in cutting holes in the ice for the 
purpose of fishing ; we must not forget that during a great 
part at least of the early stone age the conditions of life were 
those of arctic countries at the present time. 

"We cannot determine all the uses to which primitive man 
must have put his rude and ineffective weapons ; we can only 
wonder that with such he was able to maintain his existence 
among the savage beasts by which he was surrounded ; and 
we long to form to ourselves some picture of the way in 
which he got the better of their huge strength, as well as of 
his dwelling-place, his habits, and his appearance. Rude as 
his weapons are, and showing no trace of improvement, it 
seems as though man of the drift period must have lived 
through long ages of the world's history. These implements 
are found associated with the remains of the mammoth and 
the woolly rhinoceros, animals naturally belonging to the 
arctic or semi-arctic climate which succeeded the glacial era ; 
but like implements are found, associated with the remains 
of the bones of the lion, the tiger, and the hippopotamus, all 
of which, and the last especially, are rarely found outside the 
torrid zone. This would imply that the drift implements 
lasted through the change from a frigid to a torrid climate, 
and probably back again to a cold temperate one. Still the 
age of the drift implements does not seem to comprise the 
whole period of man's life before what is called the polished- 
stone age begins. There is a remarkable series of discoveries 
made in caves in various parts of Europe, which are of a more 
interesting character than the drift remains, and appear to 
carry us farther down in the history of man. 

These caves are natural caverns, generally formed in the 
limestone rocks, and at present the most remarkable " finds" 
have been obtained from the caves of Devonshire, of the De- 
partment of the Dordogne in France, from various caves in 
Belgium, and from a very remarkable cavern in the Neander- 
thal, near Diisseldorf, in Germany ; but there is scarcely any 
country in Europe where some caves containing human bones 



10 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

and weapons have not been opened. The rudest drift imple- 
ments seem older than almost any of those found in caves ; 
and, on the whole, the cave-remains seem to give vis a picture of 
man in a more civilized condition. They show us more of his 
way of life, and a greater variety in his implements, which are 
made, not of stone only, but of wood and bone as well. 
We have various worked bone implements — harpoons, with 
many barbs, whereby, no doubt, man slew the animals which 
afforded him food and clothing. Some implements of stone 
and bone which have been found in caves have been called 
arrow-heads ; but they are in all probability lance-heads, for 
it seems doubtful whether these primitive men had made tbe 
great discovery of the use of the bow and arrow. We may 
imagine that their lance or harpoon was their great weapon ; 
and a curious and close inquiry has discovered by the marks 
on some of the animal bones which are found mixed up with 
the cave implements, that the sinews had been cut from these 
bones, and used, it may be conjectured, as thongs for the bone 
harpoons. Other implements of a more domestic character 
have been found — bone awls, doubtless for piercing the animals' 
skins that they might be sewn together with sinew-threafl, 
and bone knives and needles. 

What is still more interesting "than all these, we here 
find the rudiments of art. Some of the bone implements, as 
well as some stones, are engraved, or even rudely sculptured, 
generally with the representation of an animal. These drawings 
are singularly faithful, and really give us a picture of the 
animals which were man's contemporaries upon the earth ; so 
that we have the most positive proof that man lived the con- 
temporary of animals long since extinct. The cave of La 
Madeleine, in the Dordogne, for instance, contained a piece of 
a mammoth's tusk engraved with an outline of that animal ; and 
as the mammoth was probably not contemporaneous with man 
during the latter part even of the old stone age, this gives an 
immense antiquity to the first dawnings of art. How little did 
the scratcher of this rough sketch — for it is not equal in skill to 
drawings which have been found in other caves — dream of the 
interest his performance would excite thousands of years after 
his death ! Not the greatest painter of subsequent times, and 
scarcely the greatest sculptor, can hope for so near an approach 
to immortality for their works. Had man's bones been only 
found in juxtaposition with those of the mammoth and his 



THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN. 11 

contemporary animals, this might possibly have been attri- 
buted to chance disturbances of the soil, to the accumulation 
of river deposits, or to many other accidental occurrences ; or 
had the mammoth's bone only been found worked by man, 
there was nothing positive to show that the animal had not 
been long since extinct, and this a chance bone which had 
come into the hands of a later inhabitant of the earth, just as 
it has since come into our hands ; but the actual drawing of 
this old-world, and as it sometimes almost' seems fabulous, 
animal, by one who actually saw him in real life, gives a 
strange picture of the antiquity of our race, and withal a 
strange feeling of fellowship with this stone-age man who 
drew so much in the same way as a clever child among us 
might have drawn to day. 1 

It is well worth while to pause a moment over these cave- 
drawings. They are of various degrees of merit, for some 
are so skilful as to excite the admiration of artists and the 
astonishment of archaeologists ; and it is a curious fact that 
during ages which succeeded those of the cave-dwellers,' all 
through to the polished stone period and the age of bronze — 
of which we shall have to speak anon — no such ambitious 
imitative works of art seem to have been attempted. The 
workers of these later times seem to .have confined them- 
selves in their decorations to certain arrangements of points 
and lines. The love of imitation is doubtless one of the 
rudimentary feelings in the human mind ; as we may see by 
watching children. But, rudimentary as it is, it springs from 
the same root as the highest promptings of the intellect — that 
is to say, from the wish to. create — to fashion something 
actually ourselves. This is sufficient to explain the origin of 
these carvings ; yet we need not suppose that when the art 
of making them was once known they were used merely for 
amusement. Long afterwards we find such drawings and 
representations looked upon as having some qualities of the 
things they represent ; as, for instance, where in a Saxon 
cavern at Moeshow, in the Orkney islands, we find the draw- 
ing of a dragon, which had been supposed to watch over the 

1 Most of these carved implements were discovered by Mr. Christy and 
M. Lartet, and left by the former to the French Museum of Pre-historic 
Antiquities at St. Germain. Exact copies of these in plaster, as well as 
several carved bones, may however be seen at the Christy Museum, 
Victoria Street, Pimlico, and the British Museum. 



12 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

treasures concealed within. Savages in the present day 
often think that part of them is actually taken away when a 
drawing of them is made, and exactly a similar feeling gave 
rise to the superstition so prevalent in the middle ages, that 
witches and magicians used to make a figure in wax to imitate 
the one on whom they wished to wreak their vengeance, and 
that all the pains inflicted upon this waxen antitype were 
reproduced in the body of the victim. On such confusion of 
ideas do all idolatries rest ; so may we not, without too bold 
a flight, imagine that some superstitious notions, touching 
the efficacy of these drawings, was a spur to the industry 
of our first forerunners on the earth, and contributed 
to their wonderfully acquired skill in their art 1 May they 
not have thought that their representations gave them some 
power over the animals they represented : that the lance-head 
carved with a mammoth would be efficient againt the mam- 
moth's hide ; that the harpoon containing the representation 
of a deer or a fish w T as the weapon best adapted for transfixing 
either 1 However this may be, we cannot deny the interest 
which attaches to the first dawnings of art in the world. Nor 
is this interest confined altogether to its Aesthetic side — the 
mere beauty and value of art itself — great though this be. 
Not only does drawing share that mysterious power of im- 
parting intense pleasure which belongs to every form of art, 
but it was likewise, after human speech, the first discovered 
means of conveying an idea from one man to another. As 
we shall come to see in a later chapter, the invention of 
drawing bore with it the seeds of the invention of writing, 
the greatest step forward, in material things at any rate, that 
man has ever made. 

There is one other fact to mention, and then the information 
which our cave discoveries can give us concerning the life of 
man in those days is pretty nearly exhausted. Traces of fires 
have been discovered in several caves, so that there can be no 
doubt that man had made this important discovery also. • It 
seems to us impossible to imagine a time when men could have 
lived upon the earth without this all-useful element, when they 
,must have devoured their food uncooked, and only sheltered 
themselves from the cold by the thickness of their clothing, or at 
night by huddling together in close underground houses. We 
have certainly no proof that man's existence was ever of such 
a sort as this ; but yet it is clear that the art of making fires 



THE EARLIEST TKACES OF MAN. lo 

is one not discoverable at first sight. How long man took to 
find out that method of ignition by friction of two sticks — 
the method employed in different forms by all the less culti- 
vated nations spread over the globe, and one which we may 
therefore fairly take to be the most primitive and natural — 
Ave shall never know. We have only the negative evidence 
that he had discovered it at that primaeval time when he began 
to leave his remains within the caves. 

Thus have we completed the catalogue of facts upon which 
we may build up for ourselves some representation of the life 
of man in the earliest ages of his existence upon earth. It 
must be confessed that they are meagre enough. We should 
like some further information which would help us to picture 
the man himself, his size, his appearance, what race he most 
resembled of any of those which now inhabit our globe. 
Unfortunately we have little that can assist us here. Human 
remains have been found ; on one or two occasions, a skeleton 
in tolerably complete preservation, but not yet in sufficient 
numbers to allow lis to draw any certain conclusions, or even 
to hazard any very probable conjecture. 

Among these discoveries of human skeletons, none excited 
more interest at the time it was made than the Neanderthal 
skeleton, so-called from the place in which it was found. The 
discovery was made in 1857 by Dr. Fuhlrott of Elberfelcl ; and 
when the skull and other parts of the skeleton were exhibited 
at a scientific meeting at Bonn, in the same year, doubts were 
expressed as to the human character of the remains. These 
doubts, which were soon dissipated, arose from the very low 
type of the head, which was pronounced by many to be the 
most apedike skull that they had ever seen. The bones them- 
selves indicated a person of much the same stature as a 
European of the present day, but with such an unusual 
thickness in some of them as betokened a being of very 
extraordinary strength. This discovery, had it been supported 
by others, might have seemed to indicate a race of men of a 
type in every way inferior even to the savage nations of our 
present globe. But it has not been so supported. On the 
contrary, another skull found at Engis, near Liege, not more 
than seventy miles from the cave of the Neanderthal, was 
proved after careful measurements not to differ materially 
from the skulls of individuals of the European race ; a fact 
which prevents us from making any assertions respecting 



14 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

the primitive character in race or physical conformation of 
these cave-dwellers. In fact, in a very careful and 
elaborate paper upon the Engis and Neanderthal skulls, 
Professor Huxley places an average skull of a modern native 
of Australia about half- way between those of the Neanderthal 
and Engis caves, but he also says that after going through a 
large collection of Australian skulls, he "found it possible to 
select from among these crania two (connected by all sorts of 
intermediate gradations), the one of which should very nearly 
resemble the Engis skull, while the other should somewhat 
less closely approximate to the Neanderthal skull in form, 
size, and proportions." And yet as regards blood, customs, or 
language, the natives of Southern and Western Australia are 
probably as pure as any race of savages in existence. This 
shows us how difficult would be any reasoning founded upon 
the insufficient data we possess. In fact, it would no doubt be 
possible to find in Europe among persons of abnormal under- 
development, such as idiots, skulls of a formation which would 
match that of the Neanderthal. 

This class of evidence is therefore merely negative. We 
certainly cannot pronounce that man of the old stone age was 
of a lower type than low types of savages of the present day ; 
we cannot even say he was so undeveloped as the Lapps of 
modern Europe ; but in this negative evidence there is a cer- 
tain amount of satisfaction. We might be not unwilling to 
place on the level of the Esquimaux or the Lapp the fashioners 
of the rudest of the stone implements, but the artists of the 
caves we may well imagine to have attained a higher deve- 
lopment. And there is nothing at all unreasonable or opposed 
to our experience of nature in supposing a race of human 
beings to have flourished in Europe in these old times, to have 
been possessed of a certain amount of civilization, but not to 
have advanced from that towards any very great improvement 
before they were at last extinguished by some other race with 
greater faculty of progress. As we shall come to see later on, 
there is some reason for connecting man of the later stone age 
as regards race with the Esquimaux or Lapp of to-day. Yet 
even if this be admitted, we must look upon the latter rather 
as the dregs of the races they represent. It is not always the 
best part of any particular race, whether of men, of animals, 
or of plants, which lives the longest. Species which were once 
flourishing are often only represented by stunted and inferior 



THE EARLIEST TEACES OF MAN. 15 

descendants, just as the animals of the lizard class had their 
time of greatest development long before the coming of man 
upon the earth. So we may imagine man spreading out at 
various times from his first home in Central Asia. The earlier 
races to leave this nursing-place did not, we may suppose, 
contain sufficient force to carry them beyond a low level 
of culture, and gradually got pushed on one side by more 
energetic people who came like a second wave from the common 
source. When, in the history of the world, we come to speak 
of races of whom we know more, we shall see strong reasons 
to believe that this was the rule followed ; nay, it is even 
followed at the present day where European races are spread- 
ing all over the world, and gradually absorbing or extinguishing 
inferior members of the human family. It therefore seems, 
in our present state of ignorance, most reasonable to look upon 
palaeolithic man merely as we find him, without speculating 
whether he gradually advanced to the use of better stone 
weapons, and at last to metals. 

Taking then this race as we find it, without speculating 
upon its immediate origin or future, we may endeavour to 
gather some notion of man's way of life in these primitive 
times. It was of the simplest. We may well suppose, for 
some proofs to the contrary would otherwise most likely have 
been discovered, that his life was that of the hunter, the 
earliest phase of human society, and that he had not yet 
learned to till the ground, or keep domestic animals for his 
use. ISTo bones of animals like the sheep or dog are found, 
and therefore it seems probable he had not entered upon 
the higher or shepherd phase of society. He had probably 
no fixed home, no idea of national life, scarcely of any obli- 
gations beyond the circle of his own family, in that larger 
sense in which the word " family " is generally understood 
by savages. Some sort of family or tribe no doubt held 
together, were it only for the sake of protecting themselves 
against the attacks of their neighbours. For the rest, their 
time was spent, as the time of oth^r savages is spent, in 
fighting and hunting out of doors ; within in preserving their 
food and their skins, in elaborately manufacturing their im- 
plements of stone and bone. In the inclement seasons they 
were crowded together in their caves, perhaps for months 
together, as the Esquimaux are in winter, almost without 
moving. As appears from the remains in the caves, they 



16 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

were in the habit at such times of throwing the old bones 
and the offal of their food into any corner (the Esquimaux 
do so to this day), without taking the smallest trouble to 
obviate the unpleasant effects produced by the decay of all 
this animal matter in an atmosphere naturally close. Through 
the long winter nights they found time to perfect their 
skill in those wonderful bone caiwings, and to lay up a store 
of weapons which they afterwards — anticipating the rise of 
commerce — exchanged with the inhabitants of some other 
cave for their peculiar manufacture ; for in one of the caves 
of the Dordogne we find the remains of what must have been 
a regular manufactory of one sort of flint-knife or arrow-head, 
almost to the exclusion of any other of the ordinary weapons, 
while another cave seems to have been devoted as exclusively 
to the production of implements of bone. 

i Some people have thought that they discovered in the traces 
of fires which had been sometimes lighted before caves in 
which were found human skeletons, the indication of sepul- 
chral rites, and that these caves were used as burial-places. 
But these suppositions are too vague and uncertain to be 
relied upon. On this interesting subject of sepulchral rites 
we must forbear to say anything until we come to speak of 
the second stone age. Our knowledge of the early stone- 
people must close with the slight picture we have been able 
to form of their life ; of their death of their rites of the 
dead, and the ideas concerning a future state which these 
might indicate, we cannot speak. 

This, then, is all we know of man of the first stone age, 
and it is not probable that our knowledge will ever be greatly 
increased. New finds of these stone implements are being 
made almost every clay, not in Europe only, though at present 
chiefly there, but in many other parts of the globe. But the 
new discoveries closely resemble the old, the same sort of 
implements recur again and again, and we only learn by them 
over how great a part of the globe this stage in our civili- 
zation extended. Further information of this kind may 
change some of our theories concerning the duration or the 
origin of this civilization, but it will not add much to our 
knowledge of its nature. Yet it cannot be denied that the 
thought of man's existence only, though we know little more 
than this, a contemporary of the mammoth at the time 
which immediately succeeded the glacial period, or perhaps 



THE EARLIEST TEACES OF MAN. 17 

before the glacial period had quite come to an end, is full 
of the deepest interest for us. The long silent time which 
intervenes between the creation of our first parents and those 
biblical events whereof the narration is to a certain extent 
continuous and consecutive, till the dawn of history in the 
Bible narrative in fact, is to some small extent filled in. We 
shall see in a future paper how the second stone age seems to 
carry the same picture further. In rudest outline the life of 
man is placed before us, and if we have no more than this, we 
have at any rate something which may occupy our imagi- 
nations, and prevent them, as they otherwise would do, as, 
of old men's minds did, from leaping almost at a bound from 
the creation to the flood, and from the flood to the time of 
Abraham. 



CHAPTER IT. 



THE SECOND STONE AGE. 



Between the earlier and the later stone age, between man 
of the drift period and man of the neolithic era, occurs a 
vast blank which we cannot fill in. We bid adieu to the 
primitive inhabitants of our earth while they are still the 
contemporaries of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, or of 
the cave lion and the cave bear, and while the very surface of 
the earth wears a different aspect from what it now wears. 
With a changed condition of things, with a race of animals 
which differed not essentially from those known to us, and 
with a settled conformation of our lands and seas not again 
to be departed from, comes before us the second race of man 
— man of the polished-stone age. We cannot account for the 
sudden break ; or, what is in truth the same thing, many 
different suggestions to account for it have been made. Some 
have supposed that the palaeolithic men lived at a time 
anterior to the last glacial era, for there were many glacial 
periods in Europe, and were either exterminated altogether or 
driven thence to more southern countries by the change in 
climate. Others have imagined that a new and more culti- 
vated race migrated into these countries, and at once intro- 
duced the improved weapons of the later stone age ; and 
lastly, others have looked upon the first stone age as having 
existed before the deluge, and hold that the second race of man, 
the descendants of Noah, began at once with a higher sort of 
civilization. Two of these four theories, it will be seen, must 
suppose that man somewhere went through the stages of 
improvement necessary to the introduction of the newer sort of 



THE SECOND STONE AGE. 19 

weapons, and they therefore take it for granted that the 
graduated series of stone implements, indicating a gradual 
progress from the old time to the newer, though they have not 
yet been found, are to be discovered somewhere. The first 
and last theories would seem to be more independent of this 
supposition, and therefore, as far as our knowledge yet goes, 
to be more in accordance with the facts which we possess. It 
is, however, by no means safe to affirm that the graduated 
series of implements required to support the other suppo- 
sitions will never be found. 

Be this as it may, with the second era begins the real 
continuous history of our race. However scanty the marks 
of his tracks, we may feel sure that from this time forward 
man passed on one unbroken journey of development and 
change through the forgotten eras of the world's life down 
to the dawn of history. And taking his rudest condition to 
be the most primitive, he first appears before us a fisher 
depending for his chief nourishment upon the shell-fish of 
the coast. In the north of Europe, that is to say, upon the 
shores of the Baltic, are found numbers of mounds, some 
five or ten feet high, and in length as much, sometimes, as a 
thousand feet, by one or two hundred in breadth. The 
mounds consist for the most part of myriads of cast-away 
shells of oysters, mussels, cockles, and other shell-fish ; mixed 
up with these are many bones of birds and quadrupeds, showing 
that these also served for food to the primitive dwellers by 
the shell mounds. They are called in the present day 
kjbkken-moddings, kitchen-middens. They are, in truth, the 
refuse heaps of the earliest kitchens which have smoked in 
these northern regions ; l for they are the remains of some of 
the earliest among the polished stone age inhabitants of 
Europe. 

The raisers of the Danish kitchen-middens were, we may 
judge, pre-eminently fishers ; and not fishers of that adventu- 
rous kind who seek their treasure in the depths of the ocean. 
They lived chiefly upon those smaller fish and shell-fish which 
could be caught without much difficulty or danger. ' But yet 
not only on these ; for the bones of some deep sea fish have 
also been discovered, whence we know that the mound- 

1 It is curious that there are no palaeolithic remains in Scandinavia. It 
would seem as though daring this era the countries remained V o cold for 
habitation. 

c 2 



20 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

raisers were possessed of one very important discovery, in the 
germ at least — the art of navigation. Among remains believed 
to be contemporary with the shell-mounds are found rude 
canoes not built of planks like boats, but merely hollowed out 
of the trunks of trees ; sometimes they are quite straight 
fore and aft, just as the trunk was when it was cut, some- 
times a little bevelled from below, like the stern of a boat of 
the present day ; but we beli' ve they are never found rounded 
or pointed at the prow. That " heart with oak and bronze 
thrice bound," the man who first ventured to sea in the first 
vessel, had therefore lived before this time. Whoever he was, we 
cannot, if we think of it, refuse to endorse the praise bestowed 
upon him by the poet ; it required immense courage to venture 
out to sea on such a strange make shift as the first canoe 
must have been. Perhaps the earliest experiment was an 
involuntary one, made by some one who was washed away 
upon a large log or felled tree. Then arose the notion of 
venturing again a little way, then of hollowing a seat in the 
middle of the trunk, until the primitive canoes, such as we 
find, came into existence. 

In these imperfect vessels men gradually ventured further 

and further into the ocean ; and. judging of the extent of 

their voyages by the deep-sea remains, we may be certain that 

their bravery was fatal to many. This is in all probability 

the history of the discovery or re-discovery of the art of 

navigation among savage people generally ; in all cases does 

the canoe precede the regular boat, and though Noah would 

seem to have possessed the art of shipbuilding in much 

greater perfection, his art would most probably have died 

with him if, as was probably the case, his descendants were 

long settled far inland. For it is a fact that people rarely 

begin attempts at shipbuilding before they come to live near 

the sea. As long as they can range freely on land, their 

rivers do not tempt them to any dangerous experiments. 

But the vast plain of the sea is too important, and makes 

too great an impression on their imagination for its charm 

to be long withstood. Sooner or later, with much risk of life, 

men aie sure to try and explore its solitudes, and navigation 

takes its rise. This art of seafaring, then, is amongst the 

most noticeable of the belongings of the fishermen of the 

shell-mounds. Considering that they had none but rude stone 

implements, the felling and hollowing of the trees must have 






THE SECOND STONE AGE. 21 

been an affair of no small labour, and very likely occupied a 
great deal of their time when they were not actually seeking 
their food, even though the agency of fire .supplemented the 
ineffectual blow of the stone weapons. They xnust have used 
nets for their sea-fishing, made probably of twisted bark or 
grass. And they were hunters as well as fishers', for the 
remains of various animals have been discovered on the shell- 
mounds. From these we see that the age of the post-gfoeial 
animals had by this time quite passed away ; no mammoth, 
woolly rhinoceros, or cave lion or bear is found : even the rein- 
deer, which in palaeolithic days must have ranged over France 
and Switzerland, has disappeared. 

The fact is, the climate is now much more temperate and 
uniform than in the first stone age. Then the reindeer 
and the chamois, animals which belong naturally to regions 
of ice and snow, freely traversed, in winter at least, the 
valleys or the plains far towards the south of Europe.' 
But as the climate changed, the first was driven to the 
extreme north of Europe, and the second to the higher 
mountain peaks. The only extinct species belonging to the 
shell-mounds is the wild bull (605 primi genius), which however 
survived in Europe until quite historical times. He appears 
in great numbers, as does the seal, now very rare, and the 
beaver, which is extinct in Denmark. No remains of any 
domesticated animal are found, but the existence of tame 
dogs is guessed at from the fact that the bones bear traces of 
the gnawing of canine teeth, and from the absence of bones 
of young birds and Of the softer bones of animals generally. 
For it has been shown experimentally that just those portions 
are absent from these skeletons which will be devoured when 
birds or animals of the same species are given to dogs at 
this day. Dogs, therefore, were domesticated by the stone-age 
men ; so here again we can see the beginning of a step in 
civilisation which has been of incalculable benefit to man, the 
taming of animals for his use. The ox, the sheep, the goat, 
were as yet unknown ; man was still in the hunter's condition, 
and had not advanced to the shepherd state, only training 
for his use the dog, to assist him in pursuit of the wild 
animals who supplied part of his food. He was, tod, utterly 
devoid of all agricultural knowledge. It is an established 

1 Both in Switzerland and in the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees. 






2 2, THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

fact that men become lrdnters before they become shepherds, 
and. shepherds before ^hey advance to the state of tillers of the 
soil. Probably tb/ d ' domestication of the dog marks a sort of 
transition state Jo'etween the hunter and the shepherd. When 
that experimejnt has been tried the notion must sooner or later 
spring up C't training other animals, and keeping them for use 
or food,.' With regard to the dogs themselves, it is a curious 
fact tJiiat those of the ston-> age are smaller than tho-e of the 
br^mze period, while the dogs of the bronze age are again 
Smaller than those of the age of iron. This is an illustration 
of the well-known fact that domestication increases the size 
and improves the character of animals as training does that of 
plants. 

There is one other negative fact which we gather from the 
bones of these refuse-heaps — no human bones are mingled with 
them, so that we may conclude these men were not cannibals. 
In fact, cannibalism is an extraordinary perversion of human 
nature, arising it is difficult to say exactly how, and only 
showing itself among particular people and under peculiar 
conditions. There is no doubt that, among a very large 
proportion of the savage nations which at present inhabit our 
globe, cannibalism is practised, and of this fact many ex- 
planations have been offered ; but they are generally far- 
fetched and unsatisfactory ; and it is certainly not within our 
scope to discuss them here. How little natural cannibalism 
is even to the most savage men is proved by the fact that man 
is scarcely ever, except under urgent necessitj^, found to feed 
upon the flesh of carnivorous or flesh-eating animals, and this 
alone, besides every instinct of our nature, would be sufficient 
to prevent him from eating his fellow-men. 

We have many proofs of the great antiquity of the shell- 
mounds. Their position gives one. While most of them are 
confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the sea-shore, 
some few are found at a distance of several miles inland. 
These exceptions may always be referred to the presence of a 
stream which has gradually deposited its mud at the place 
where it emptied itself into the sea. or to some other cause 
fitted for the extension of the coast line ; so that these miles 
of new coast have come into existence after the shell mounds 
were raised On the other hand, there are no mounds upon 
those parts of the coast which border on the Western Ocean. 
But it is just here that, owing to a gradual depression of the 



THE SECOND STONE AGE. 23 

land at the rate of two or three inches in a century x the 
waves are gradually eating away the shore. This is what 
happens on every sea-coast. Almost all over the world there 
is a small but constant movement of the solid crust of the 
earth, which is, in fact, only a crust over the molten mass 
within. Sometimes, and in some places, the imprisoned mass 
makes itself felt, in violent upheavals, in sudden cracks of 
the inclosing surface, which wc call earthquakes and volcanoes ; 
but oftener its effect is slight and almost unnoticed. This 
interchange of state between the kingdoms of the land and 
of the ocean helps to show us the time which has passed 
between the making of the kitchen middens and our own days. 
There seems little doubt that all along the coast of the North 
Sea, as well as on that of the Baltic, these mounds once stood ; 
but by the gradual undermining of the cliffs the former have all 
been swept away, while the latter have, as it appears, been moved 
a little inland ; and we have seen that when there was another 
cause present to form land between the kitchen-middens and 
the sea, the distance has often been increased to several miles. 
There is another and still stronger proof of the antiquity 
of the shell- mounds. If we examine the shells themselves, 
we find that they all belong to still living species, and they 
are all exactly similar to such as might be found in the 
ocean at the present clay. But it happens that this is not now 
the case with the shells of the same fish belonging to the 
Baltic Sea. For the waters of this sea are brackish, and not 
salt ; so that the shell-fish which dwell in it do not attain 
half their natural size. The oyster, too, will not live at all 
in the Baltic, except near its entrance, where, whenever the 
wind blows from the north-west, a strong current of salt 
ocean water is poured in. Yet the oyster- shells are espe- 
cially abundant in the kitchen middens. From all this we 
gather that, at the time of the making of these mounds, there 
must have be?n free communication between the ocean and the 
Baltic Sea. In all probability, in fact, there were a number 
of such passages through the peninsula of Jutland, which was 
consequently at that time an archipelago. 

1 In height, that is — The distance of coast-line wHch disappears owing 
to the mere volcanic depression, or the distance of coast-line which appears 
on the other shore from this cause (independently of river deposits, &c), 
depends of course upon the level of the coast. It would not, however, he 
generally more than three or four yards. 



24 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

As ages passed on the descendants of these solitary fisher- 
men spread themselves over Europe, and improving in their 
way of life and mastery over mechanical arts, found them- 
selves no longer constrained to trust for their livelihood to 
the spoils of the sea shallows. They made lances and axes 
(headed with stone), and perfected the use of the bow and 
arrow until they became masters of the game of the forest. 
And then, after a while, man grew out of this hunter 
stage and domesticated other animals besides the dog : oxen, 
pigs, and geese. No longer occupied solely by the search for 
his daily food he raised mighty tombs — huge mounds of earth 
inclosing a narrow grave— to the departed great men of his 
race ; and he reared up those enormous masses of stone called 
cromlechs or dolmens — such as we see at Stonehenge — as 
altars to his gods. 

• The great tombs of earth — which have their fellows not 
in Europe only, but over the greater part of the world — 
are the special and characteristic features of the stone age. 
The raisers of the kitchen-middens may have preceded the men 
who built the tombs : for their mode of life was as we should 
say the most primitive : but tbey were confined to a corner of 
Europe. The tomb-builders formed one of a mighty brotherhood 
of men linked together by the characteristics of a common 
civilization. These sepulchres called in England tumuli or 
barrows are hills of earth from one to as much as four hundred 
feet long, by a breadth and height of from thirty to fifty feet. 
They are either chambered or unchambered ; that is, they are 
either raised over a small vault made of stone (with perhaps 
a sort of vestibule or entrance chamber), or else a mere 
hollow has been excavated within the mound. In these 
recesses repose the bodies of the dead, some great chieftain or 
hero — the father of his people, who came to be regarded after 
his death with almost the veneration of a god. Beside the 
dead were placed various implements and utensils, left there 
to do him honour or service, to assist him upon the journey 
to that undiscovered country whither he was bound ; the 
best of sharpened knives or spear-heads, some jars of their 
rude pottery, once filled with food and drink, porridge, 
rough cakes and beer. 1 And may be a wife or two, and 

1 It seems highly probable that the invention of some sort of malt liquor 
followed upon the growth of com. Tacitus mentions such a liquor as 



THE SECOND STONE AGE. 25 

some captives of the last battle were sacrificed to his shade, 
that he might not go quite unattended into that " other 
world." The last ceremony was not always, but it must have 
been often, enacted. Out of thirty-two stone age barrows 
excavated in Wiltshire, seventeen contained only one skeleton, 
and the rest various numbers, from two to an indefinite 
number ; and, in one case at least, all the skulls save one have 
been found cleft as by a stone hatchet. 

At the door of the mound or in an entrance chamber many 
bones have been discovered, the traces of a funeral feast, the 
wake or watch kept on the evening of the burial. Likely 
enough if the chief were almost deified after death, the 
funeral feast would become periodical. It would be con- 
sidered canny and of good omen that the elders of the 
tribe should meet there at times in solemn conclave, on 
the eve of a warlike expedition or whenever the watchful 
care of the dead hero might avail his descendants. From 
the remains of these feasts, and from the relics of the tombs, 
we have the means of forming some idea of man's acquire- 
ments at this time. His implements are improvements upon 
those of the stone age ; in all respects, that is, save in this 
one, that he had now no barbed weapons ; whereas we 
remember that in the caves barbed harpoons are frequently 
met with. Nor, again, had he the artistic talent of the cave- 
dwellers : no traces of New Stone-age drawings have come 
to light. For the rest, his implements and weapons may be 
divided into a few distinctive classes : — ■ 

1. Hammers, hatchets, tomahawks, or chisels, an instru- 
ment made of a h avy piece of stone brought to a sharp 
cutting edge at one end, and at the other rounded or flat, 
so as to serve the double purpose of a hammer and an axe. 
When these are of an elongated form they are called celts or 
chisels. 2. Arrow and spear heads r which differ in size but 
not much in form, both being long and narrow in shape, 
often closely resembling the leaf of the laurel or the bay, 
sometimes of a diamond shape, but more often having the 
lateral corners nearest to the end which fitted into the shaft. 
Viewed edgeways, they also appear to taper towards either 
end, for while one point was designed to pierce .the victim, 

having teen drunk by the Germans of his day. He is douhtless describing 
a sort of beer. 



26 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

the other was fitted into a cleft handle, and bound into it 
with cord or sinew. Implements have been discovered still 
fitted into their handles. 3. The stone knives, which have 
generally two cutting edges, and when this is the case do not 
greatly differ from the spear -heads, though they are commonly 
less pointed than the latter. A few bone implements have 
been found in the tumuli, a pin, a chisel, and a knife or so ; 
but they are very rare, they are never carved, and have not 
one quarter of the interest which belongs to the bone imple- 
ments of the caves. Finally, we must not omit to say that in 
Anhalt, in Germany, a large stone has been found which seems 
to have served the purpose of a plough. For there can be 
little doubt that if some of the tumuli belong to a time before 
the use of domesticated animals — save the dog — they last 
down to a time when man not only had tame oxen, pigs, goats 
and geese, 1 but also sowed and planted, and lived the life of 
an agricultural race ; nor will it be said that such an advance 
was extraordinary when we say that the minimum duration of 
the age of polished stone was probably two thousand years. 

Other relics from the mounds, not less interesting than the 
weapons, are their vessels of pottery ; for here we see the 
earliest traces of another art. This pottery is of a black 
colour, curiously mixed with powdered shells, perhaps to 
strengthen the clay, perhaps for ornament. Its pottery 
belongs to the latter portion of this age of stone, a period 
distinguished not only by the use of domestic animals, but 
also by the growth of cereals. We have said that bones of 
cattle, swine, and in one case of a goose, have been found 
among the refuse of the funeral feasts. But man was still a 
hunter, as he is to this day, though he had found other means 
of support besides the wild game ; and we -also find the bones 
of the red-deer and the wild bull, both of which supplied him 
with food. Wolves' teeth too have been found pierced, so as 
to be strung into a necklace ; for personal adornment formed, 
in those days as now, part of the interest of life. Jet beads 
have been discovered in large numbers, and even some of 
amber, which seems to have been brought from the Baltic to 
these countries and as far south as Switzerland ; and it is 
known that during the last portion of what is, nevertheless, 

1 But not sheep apparently ; at least not in Western Europe. In these 
islands the sheep did not appear before the time of Julius Caesar. 



THE SECOND STONE AGE. 27 

still the stone period, the most precious metal of all, gold, was 
used for ornament. Gold is the one metal which is frequently 
found on the surface of the ground, and therefore it was 
naturally the first to come under the eye of man. 

Their religion probably consisted in part of the worship of 
the dead, so that the very tombs themselves, and not the 
cromlechs only, were a sort of temples. And yet they had 
the deepest dread of the reappearance of the departed upon 
earth — of his ghost. To prevent his " walking " they adopted 
a strange practical form of exorcism. They strewed the ground 
at the grave's mouth with sharp stones or broken pieces of 
pottery, as though a ghost could have his feet cut, and by 
fear of that be kept from returning to his old haunts. For 
ages and ages after the days of the mound-builders the same 
custom lived on of which we here see the rise. The same 
ceremony — turned now to an unmeaning rite — was used 
for the graves of those, such as murderers or suicides, who 
might be expected to sleep uneasily in their narrow house. 
This is the custom which is refei*red to in the speech of the 
priest to Laertes. 1 Ophelia had died under such suspicion of 
suicide, that it was a stretch of their rule, he says, to grant 
her Christian burial. 

" And Imt the great command o'ersways our order, 
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged 
To the last trumpet : for charitable prayers, 
Shards, flints and pebbles, should be thrown on her." 
********* 

The body of him for whom the mound was built was not 
buried in the centre, but at one end, and that commonly the 
east, for in most cases the barrows lie east and west. It 
is never stretched out flat, but lies or sits in a crouched 
attitude, the head brought down upon the breast, and the 
knees raised up to meet the chin. So that the dead man was 
left facing toward the west — the going down of the sun. There 
cannot but be some significance in this. The daily death of 
the sun has, in all ages -and to all people, spoken of man's 
own death, his western course has seemed to tell of that 
last journey upon which all are bent. So that the resting 
place of the soul is nearly always imagined to lie westward in 
the home of the setting sun. For the rest, there seems little 

1 Hamlet, act v. sc. 1. 



2S 



THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 



doubt that the barrows represent nothing else — though upon 
a large scale— than the dwelling home of the time, and that the 
greater part of their funeral rites are very literal and unsyni- 
bolical. 1 The Esquimaux and Lapps of our day dwell in huts 
no more commodious than the small chambers of the barrows, 
and exceedingly like them in shape ; only they keep them 
warm by heaping up over them not earth but snow. In these 
they sit squatting in an attitude, not unlike that of the 
skeleton of the tumuli. Of the human remains the skulls are 
small and round, and have a prominent ridge over the sockets 
of the eyes, showing that the ancient race was of small stature 
with round heads and overhanging eyebrows ; in short, they 
bore a considerable resemblance to the modern Laplanders. 

We are still, however, left in darkness about that part of 
the stone age thought which has left the grandest traces, 
and of which we should so much have wished to be informed ; 
I mean the religion. Besides the tumuli we have those 
enormous piles of stone called cromlechs, or dolmens, and 
sometimes miscalled Druid circles— such is the well-known 
Stonehenge ; these were their temples or sacred places. Each 
arrangement is generally a simple archwav, made by placing 
one enormous block upon two others ; and these arches are 
sometimes arranged in circles, as at Stonehenge, sometimes in 
long colonnades, as at Carnac in Brittany. Lesser dolmens 
have been found in most European countries ; and there 
can be little doubt that they possessed a religious character. 
As a rule, the grave mounds are built upon elevations com- 
manding a considerable prospect, and it is rare to find two 
within sight. Yet over Salisbury Plain, and the part about 
Stonehenge, they are much more numerous, as many as a 
hundred and fifty having been discovered in this neighbour- 
hood, as though it were a desired privilege to be buried within 
such hallowed ground. Of the worship which these stone 

1 M. Troyon lias started the idea that the crouched attitude of the dead— 
rephee, as he describes it : he declares that it does not in the least resemble 
the crouched attitude which men of some races assume when sleeping— 
was imposed upon the dead with a symbolical meaning, viz.. that it was 
meant to imitate the position of the child in the womb of its parent 
and as such to enfold the hope of resurrection in the act of entombment 
Ihe idea is a poetical one, but I much doubt whether it has pre-existed in 
other minds before finding a place in that of M. Tryon. The author how- 
ever, should be heard in defence of his own theory, and may be so in the 
Bevua Arch. ix. 239. 



THE SECOND STONE AGE. 29 

altars commemorate we know absolutely nothing. There 
seems to be no reasonable doubt that they belong to the period 
we are describing. The name Druid Circles, which has been 
sometimes given them, is an absurd anachronism, for, as we 
shall have occasion to see later on. the ancestors of the Kelts 
(or Celts), to whom the Druidical religion belonged, were at 
this time still living on the banks of the Oxus in Central 
Asia. Thus, though we must continue to wonder how these 
people could ever have raised such enormous stones as altars 
of their religion, the nature of that religion itself is hidden 
from us. 

The relics of the tombs are the truest representatives of the 
stone age, for these tombs show their summits in every land, 
and the characteristic features of the remains found in them 
are the same in each. They have arisen during the greatest 
extension of the stone age races, before any other people had 
come to dispute their territory, and express their fullest 
development, as the shell-mounds do their germ. We now 
pass to another series of stone age remains which must have 
been contemporary with their latter years, and have been 
gradually absorbed into the age of bronze. These remains 
come from the lake-dwellings. But let it not be supposed 
that these lake-dwellings extended over a short period. A 
variety of separate pieces of evidence enforce upon us the 
conclusion that the stone age in Europe endured for at least 
two thousand years. Even the latter portion of that epoch 
will allow a cycle vast enough for the lives of the lake-dwellers ; 
for the dwellings did not come to an end at the end of the 
age of stone, they only began in it. They were seen by 
Roman eyes almost as late as the beginning of our own era. 

Eor at least two thousand years, then, we may say, the men 
who lived in the country of the Swiss lakes, and those of 
Northern Italy, adopted the apparently inexplicable custom 
of making their dwellings, not upon the solid ground, but upon 
platforms constructed with infinite trouble above the waters of 
the lake. And the way they set about it was in this wise : 
Having chosen their spot — if attainable, a sunny shore protected 
as much as possible from storms, and having a lake-bottom of 
a soft and sandy nature — they proceeded to drive in piles, 
composed of tree-stems taken from the neighbouring forests, 
from four to eight inches in breadth. These piles had to be 



30 THE DAWtf OF HISTORY. 

foiled, and afterwards sharpened, either by fire or a stone axe, 
then driven in from a raft by the use of ponderous stone 
mallets ; and when we have said that in one instance 
the number of piles of a lake village has been estimated at 
from 40,000 to 50,000, the enormous labour of the process 
will be apparent This task finished, the piles were 
levelled at a certain height above the water, and a platform 
of boards was fastened on with pegs. On the platform were 
erected huts, probably square or oblong in shape, not more 
than twenty feet or so in length, adapted however for the use 
of a single family, and generally famished, it would appear, with 
a hearth-stone and a corn crusher apiece. The huts were made 
of wattle-work, coated on both sides with clay. Stalls were 
provided for the cattle, and a bridge of from only ten or twelve 
to as much as a hundred yards in length led back to the main- 
land. Over this the cattle must have been driven every day, at 
least in summer, to pasture on the bank ; and no doubt the 
village community separated for the' various occupations of 
fishing, for hunting, for agriculture, and for tending the cattle. 
As may be imagined, these wooden villages were in peculiar 
danger from fire, and a very la-ge number have suffered destruc- 
tion in this way, a circumstance fortunate for modern science, 
for many things which had been partially burnt before falling 
into the lake have, by the coating of charcoal formed round 
them, been made impervious to the corroding influence of the 
water. Thus we have preserved the very grain itself, and their 
loaves or cakes of crushed but not ground meal. The grains 
are of various kinds of wheat and barley, oats, and millet. 

It may be wondered for what object the enormous trouble 
of erecting these lake-dwellings could have been undertaken ; 
and the only answer which can be given is, that it was to 
protect their inhabitants from their enemies. Whether each 
village formed a separate tribe and made war upon its neigh- 
bours, or whether the lake-dwellers were a peaceful race fleeing 
from more savage people of the mainland, is uncertain. There 
is nothing which leads us to suppose they were of a warlike 
character, and as far as the arts of peace go they had advanced 
considerably upon the men of the tumuli. More especially 
do the woven cloths, sometimes worked with simple but not 
inartistic patterns, excite our admiration. Ornaments of amber 
are frequent, and amber must have been brought from the 
Baltic ; while in one settlement, believed to be of the stone aire, 



THE .SECOND STONE AOE. 31 

the presence of a glass bead would seem to imply a commerce 
with Egypt, the only country in which the traces of glass 
manufacture at this remote pei'iod have been found. 1 It 
is believed by good authorities, that the stone age in Europe 
came to an end about two thousand years before Christ, or 
at a time nearly that of Abraham, and its shortest duration 
as we saw must also be considered to be two thousand years. 

These men of the lakes stand in no degree behind the 
mound builders for the material elements of civilization. 
Nay, they are in some respects before them. Their life seems 
to have been more confined and simple than that which was 
going on in other parts of Europe. Its very peacefulness and 
simplicity gave men the opportunity for perfecting some of 
their arts. Thus their agriculture was more careful and 
more extended than that of the men of the tumuli. Their 
cattle would appear to have been numerous ; all were stall fed 
upon the island home, or if in the morning driven out to pasture 
over the long bridge to the mainland, they were brought home 
again at night. To agriculture had been added the special 
art of gardening, for these men cultivated fruit-trees ; and 
they spun hemp and flax, and even constructed — it is believed 
■ — some sort of loom for weaving cloth. Yet for all that, if in 
these respects they were superior to the men of the tumuli, 
their life was probably more petty and narrow than the others. 
There must have been some grandeur in the ideas of men 
who could have built such enormous tombs and raised those 
wondrous piles of altar-stones. If the first were made in 
honour of their chiefs, the existence of such chiefs implies 
their power of expanding into a wide social life ; so too the 
immense labour which the raising of the cromlechs demanded 
argues strong if not the most elevated religious ideas. And it 
has been often and truly remarked that these two elements 
of progress, social and religious life, are always intimately 
associated. It is in the common worship more than in the 
common language that we find the beginning of nationalities. 
It was so in Greece. The city life grew up around the temple 
of a particular tutelary deity, and the associations of cities 
arose from their association in the worship at some common 
shrine. The common nationality of the Hellenes was kept 

1 The Phoenicians are said by tradition to have invented the manufac- 
ture of glass. But there is no proof of tins. 



32 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

alive more than anything in the quadrennial games in honour 
of the Olympian Zeus, just as the special citizenship of Athens 
found expression in the peculiar worship of the virgin goddess 
Athrnc. So we may well argue from the great stone remains, 
that man had even then attained some progress in civil govern- 
ment. They show us the extended conditions of tribal govern- 
ment : but the lake-dwellers only give us a picture of the 
simplest and narrowest form of the village community. It is 
with them a complete condition of social ecpiality ; there is 
no appearance of any grade of rank ; no hut on these islands 
is found the larger or better supplied or more cared for than 
the rest. A condition of things not unlike that which we 
find in Switzerland at the present day; one favourable to 
happiness and contentment, to improvement in the simpler 
arts, but not to wide views of life, or to any great or 
general progress. 

From our various sources of knowledge, then, we gain a 
slight but not uninteresting picture of man's life in the New 
Stone Age, and of his slow progress along the road toward 
civilization. We begin with the hunters and fishers of the 
shell-mounds, a race of men who may be compared almost 
exactly with the Lapps and Esquimaux of the present day — - 
men without any organization or policy, with no rudiment of 
art save that of navigation, and almost without an object in 
life except of supporting the immediate wants of existence. 
Not indeed that we need suppose them, any more than the 
Esquimaux or Lapps, without either a religion or such germs 
of a literature as consist in traditional tales, passed on from 
father to son. Such seeds of moral and intellectual life are 
to be found among the rudest savages. 

And as time passes on they improve, passing from the 
hunter state to that of the pastoral, 1 and from the pastoral to 
the agricultural ; with all the other growths, arts, and re- 
ligious and social life, which have been pointed out and which 
two thousand years or so might well produce. 

Then came the discovery of metal ; and what is called the 
Bronze Age — the age before iron was found — supervened upon 
the age of stone. In some countries the discovery was natural, 

1 The pastoral state should not he taken as necessarily implying sheep, 
only some domesticated animal, probably oxen, possihly swine that can be 
fed in herds on pastures, i.e.-, on land which has received no human culti- 
vation. This stage of course precedes that of the agriculturist. 



THE SECOND STONE AGE. 33 

and one age followed upon the other in gradual sequence. 
But in Europe it was not so. The men of the bronze age were 
a new race sallying out of the East to dispossess the older 
inhabitants, and if in some places the bronze men and the 
stone men seem to have gone on for a time side by side, the 
general character of the change is that of a sudden break. 
Therefore we do not now proceed to speak of the characteristic 
civilization of the bronze age. As will be seen hereafter, the 
bringers of the new weapons belonged to a race concerning 
whom we have much ampler means of information than is 
possessed for the first inhabitants of these lands ; and we are 
spared the necessity of drawing all our knowledge from a 
scrutiny of their arms or tombs. But before we can satisfac- 
torily show who were the successors of the stone-age men in 
Europe, and whence they came, we must turn aside towards 
another inquiry, viz., into the origin of language. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE. 



We have looked at man fashioning the first implements and 
weapons and houses which were ever made ; we now turn 
aside and ask what were the first of those immaterial instru- 
ments, those "aeriform, mystic" legacies which were handed 
down and gradually improved from the time of the earliest 
inhabitants of our globe 1 Foremost among these, long ante- 
rior to the " metallurgic and other manufacturing skill," comes 
language. With us, to whom thought and speech are so bound 
together as to be almost inseparable, the idea that language 
is an instrument which through long ages has been slowly 
improved to its present perfection, seems difficult of credit. 
We think of early man having the same ideas and expressing 
them as readily as we do now ; but this is not the case. I Not, 
indeed, that we have any reason to believe that there was a 
time when man had no language at all, but it seems certain 
that long ages were necessary before this instrument could be 
wrought to the fineness in which we find it, and to which in 
all the languages we are likely to become acquainted with, we 
are accustomed. A rude iron knife or spearhead seems a 
simple and natural thing to make. But we know that before 
it could be made iron had to be discovered, and the art of 
extracting iron from the ore ; and, as a matter of fact, we 
know that thousands of years passed before the iron spear- 
head was a possibility, thousands of years spent in slowly 
improving the weapons of stone, and passing on from them 
to the weapons of bronze. So, too, with language ; simple as 



THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE. 35 

it seems at first sight to fit the word on to the idea, and early 
as we ourselves learn this art, a little thought about what 
language is will show us how much we owe to the ages which 
hare gone before. 

To begin with, then, let us try and consider what language 
really is. The first thing which it is very important we should 
realize is that writing has nothing to do with the formation 
of language ; for writing is a comparatively late invention, 
and came long after languages had gone through the chief 
stages of their growth, and was never meant for any other 
purpose than to convey to the eye the idea of sound. Language 
itself belongs to sound only, and appeals to no other sense 
than the sense of hearing. This everybody will agree to at 
once, for it is no more than saying that people who cannot 
read or write have still a language ; and, of course, three or 
four centuries ago there were comparatively few individuals 
among all the inhabitants of Europe who could write ; even 
now there are hundreds of languages in the world which have 
never been committed to writing. The observation would 
indeed be scarce worth the making, but for the necessity of 
a precaution against thinking at all of the look of words 
and not of their sound. And now, say we take any word and 
ask ourselves what exact relationship it holds with the thought 
for which it stands. " Book" — no sooner have we pronounced 
the word than an idea more or less distinct comes into our 
mind. The thought and the sound seem inseparable, and we 
cannot remember the time when they were not so. Yet 
the connection between the thought and the sound is not 
necessary. In fact, a sound which generally comes con- 
nected with one idea may — if we are engaged at the time upon 
a language not our own — enter our minds, bringing with it an 
idea quite unconnected with the first. Share and chere, feel 
and viel, are examples in point ; and the same thing is shown 
by the numerous sounds in our language which have two or 
more quite distinct meanings, as for example — ivare and were, 
and (with most people) where too ; and rite and right, and 
wright are pronounced precisely alike ; therefore there can 
be no reason why one sound should convey one idea more 
than another. In other words, the idea and the sound have 
an arbitrary, not a natural connection. We have been taught 
to make the sound " book " for the idea book, but had we been 
brought up by French parents the sound " livre " would have 

v 2 



36 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

seemed the natural one to make. So that this wondrous 
faculty of speech has, like those other faculties of which 
Carlyle speaks, been handed down on impalpable vehicles of 
sound through the ages. Never, perhaps, since the time of 
our first parents has one person from among the countless 
millions who have been born had to invent for himself a way 
of expressing his thoughts in words. This is alone a strange 
thing enough. Impossible as it is to imagine ourselves with- 
out speech, we may ask the question— What should we do 
if we .were ever left in such a predicament? Should we 
have any guide in fitting the sound on to the idea 1 Share 
and chere, feel and viel— among these unconnected notions is 
there any reason why we should wed our speech to one rather 
than another 1 Clearly there is no reason. Yet in the case 
which we imagined of a number of rational beings who had 
to invent a language for the first time, if they are ever to come 
to an understanding at all there must be some common 
impulse which makes more than one choose the same sound 
for a particular idea. How, for instance, we may ask, was it 
with our first parents 1 They have passed on to all their 
descendants for ever the idea of conveying thought by sound, 
and all the great changes which have since come into the lan- 
guages of the world have been gradual and, so to say, natural. 
But this first invention of the idea of speech is of quite another 
character. 

Here we are brought to the threshold of that impenetrable 
mystery, "the beginning of things," and here we must pause. 
We recognise this faculty of speech as a thing mysterious, 
unaccountable, belonging to that supernatural being, man. 
There must have been and must be in us a something which 
causes our mouth to echo the thought of the heart ; and ori- 
ginally this echo must have been spontaneous and natural, 
the same for all alike. Now it is a mere matter of tradition 
and instruction, the sound we use for the idea ; but at first 
the two must have had some subtle necessary connection, or 
how could one of our first parents have known or guessed 
what the other wished to say? Just as every metal has its 
peculiar ring, it is as though each impression on the mind 
rang out its peculiar word from the tongue. 1 Or was it like 
the faint tremulous sound which glasses give when music is 
played near? The outward object or the inward thought 
1 The simile is Mr. Max Mullet's. 



THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE. St 

called out a sort of mimicry, a distant echo — not like, but yet 
born of the other — on the lips. These earliest sounds may 
perhaps still sometimes be detected. In the sound flu or flu, 
which in an immense number of languages stands connected 
with the idea of flowing and of rivers, do we not recognise 
some attempt to catch the smooth yet rushing sound of water 1 
And again, in the sound gra or c/ri, which is largely associated 
with the notion of grinding, cutting, or scraping, 1 there is 
surely something of this in the guttural harshness of the 
letters, which make the tongue grate, as it were, against the 
roof of the mouth. And if we see reason to think that these 
primitive sounds are not always the closest possible imitations 
of the things they should express, we need not be surprised, 
since we notice the same fact with regard to our other ways 
of conveying ideas. In expressive actions, we only half imi- 
tate the motion we intend should be followed. We say "go," 
and dart out our hand, half to show that the person is to go 
in the direction we point out, or that he is to keep away from 
us ; and halt", again, with the object of expressing to him rapid 
motion by the quickness of our own movement . So with the first 
words. The names of animals, for instance, did not at'tempt 
to mimic the sound which the animal makes — as children call 
a dog a " bow-wow," and a lamb a " baa " — but they were, as 
we have said, something like echoes upon the tongue of the 
combined effects the animal produced to sight and hearing. 

We may suppose the first created man to have immediately, 
by this quick, spontaneous faculty of his, found words for 
every object which met his eye and reached his ear, as ^dam 
is described naming each one of the animals among whom he 
lived ; but even when furnished with a long vocabulary to 
represent things and belongings of things (which we call 
attributes or adjectives) and motions of every sort, he would 
still want a number of other words which could not by any 
possibility spring directly from the picture formed in his 
mind. All languages are full of words which hj themselves 

1 In English we have grind, grate, (s)cra(pe), grave, (German, graben, 
' to dig ; ' Eng. ' grub.') All words for writing mean cutting, because all 
writing was originally graving on a stone : thus the Latin scribo (corrupted in 
the French to ecris), in the Greek is grapho, in the German schreibe. 
These words, as well as the English write, are known to be all from the 
same root ; it is not pretended that they are proofs of a natural selection 
of sound ; but they may be instances of it. 



158 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

do not and cannot awaken definite thoughts in us. All ad- 
verbs, conjunctions, prepositions, particles, belong to this class. 
To, as, but, when, do not as mere words and taken by them- 
selves convey any meaning ; but adjectives, verbs, and sub- 
stantives, hard, beat, hand, do convey an idea when taken 
quite alone. So that after the first man had got his list of 
sounds which were real echoes of his thought, he had to get 
another series of sounds which were echoes of nothing by 
themselves, but were useful for joining the others together, 
showing the connection in which they stood one to another. 

This, then, was the second stage of language, the making 
of what we may call the meaningless words, for they are 
meaningless when taken quite alone. This second stage was 
probably a much slower one than the first. The making of 
meaning sounds might have gone on with any degree of 
rapidity, provided man started with the word-making faculty 
within. But there seems reason to believe that every mean- 
ingless word has arisen out of some word which once belonged 
to the real "echo" class ; that to, for instance, with, by, and, 
have descended from older roots (now lost), which if placed 
alone would once have conveyed as much idea to the mind as 
pen, ink, paper, do to us. It is impossible to show what all 
our meaningless words have come from ; and we have not even 
the intention of bringing forward all the reasons on which 
this opinion is grounded — it would be too wearisome. But 
we may notice one or two instances of how even at the present 
day this process of changing meaning into meaningless words 
is still going on. Take first the word even, which we used a 
moment ago. "Even at the present day." Here even is an 
adverb, quite meaningless when used alone, at least as an 
adverb ; but if we see it alone it becomes another word, an 
adjective, a meaning word, bringing before us the idea of two 
ihings hanging level. " Even if" is nonsense as an idea with 
nothing to follow it, but " even weights " is a perfectly clear 
and definite notion, and each of the separate words even and 
weights give us clear and definite notions too. It is the same 
with just, which is both adverb and adjective. "Just as" 
brings no thought into the mind, but " just man " and just 
and man separately or together, do. While or whilst are 
meaningless ; but ' a while,' or ' to while ' — to loiter — are full 
of meaning. In each case the meaningless word came from 
the meaning word, and was first used as a sort of metaphor, 



THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE. 39 

and then the metaphorical part was lost sight of. The Eng- 
lish not is meaningless, and just as much so are the French 
pas and point in the sense of not ; but in the sense of footstep, 
or point, they have meaning enough. Originally il ne veut 
2xts meant, metaphorically, " he does not wish a step of your 
wishes," " he does not go a footstep with you in your wish " ; 
il ne veut point, " he does not go a point with you in your 
wish." Nowadays all this metaphorical meaning is gone, 
except to the eye of the grammarian. People recognise that 
il ne veut point is rather stronger than il ne veut pas, but it 
never occurs to them to wonder why. 

There are so many of these curious examples that one is 
tempted to go on choosing instances ; but we confine ourselves 
to one more. Our word yes is a word which by itself is quite 
incapable of calling up a picture in our minds, but the word is 
or "it is," though the idea it conveys is very abstract, and, so 
to say, intangible — as compared/f or instance, with such verbs as 
move, beat— nevertheless belongs to the meaning class. Now it 
happens that the Latin language used the word est "it is " where 
we should now use the word "yes" ; and it still further happens 
that our yes x is probably the same as the German es, and was 
used in the same sense of it is as well. Instead of the meaning- 
less word " yes " the Romans used the word est " it is," and our 
own ancestors expressed the same idea by saying "it." Still 
more. It is well known that French is in the main a descend- 
ant from the Latin, not the Latin of Rome, but the corrupter 
Latin which was spoken in Gaul. Now these Latin-speaking 
Gauls did not, for some reason, say est " it is " for yes, as the 
Romans did; but they used a pronoun, either Me, "he," or hoc, 
"this." When, therefore, a Gaul wanted to say 'yes,' he nodded, 
and said he or else this, meaning "he is so," or " this is so." 
As it happens the Gauls of the north said Me, and those of 
the south said hoc, and these words gradually got corrupted 
into two meaningless words, oui and oc. And, as is well 
known, the people in the south of France were especially dis- 
tinguished by using the word oc instead of oui for "yes," so 
that their " dialect " got to be called the langue d'oc, and this 
word Languedoc gave the name to a province of France. But 
long before that time, we may be sure, both the people of the 

1 Yes is probably not the same word as the German ja (whose meaning 
form is loyt), though our yea is. 



•40 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

langue d'oni and those of the langue d'oc had forgotten that 
their words for " yes" once meant "he " and " this." 

We can from these instances pretty well guess the way in 
which the second vocabulary of meaningless words was formed. 
Man must have begun speaking always in a metaphorical way. 
Instead of saying " on the rock," or " under the rock," he 
perhaps said "head of rock " and " foot of rock," and the words 
he used for head and foot may have got corrupted and changed ; 
so that the older form might remain for the meaningless 
words on, under, and a newer form come to be used for head 
and foot. Just as the Frenchman never knows that his oui 
and il are both sprung from the same Latin ille. Nor, again, 
does the ordinary German recognise in his geiviss, "certainly," 
the same word as his past participle gewissen, ' known ' ; nor 
the ordinary Englishman reflect that the adverb "ago" is 
derived from "agone," an old past participle of the verb "to go." 



When people first began using sounds to express ideas, it 
would seem that a single sound was used to express each 
separate idea. Or, putting it differently, we may say that the 
earliest words were words of one syllable only. As man must 
have been in want of an enormous number of these simple 
sounds, he soon began ringing as many changes as possible 
upon each, so that with every sound went a whole family of 
others which were very like it, and meant to stand for ideas 
similar to the idea expressed by the first sound. Now the 
most important part of every sound, as far as the meaning 
goes, are the consonants which compose it, and even at the 
present day, if we keep the consonants of any word the same, 
and alter the vowel or diphthong, we get a fresh meaning 
closely connected with the first (fly, flee, stving, swung, Arc. ). 
It was in this way that a great many words arose connected 
into a class by the consonants remaining unaltered and con- 
nected together also by the thread of a common idea. As in 
"swing," "swung," " swang," we have three different ideas 
expressing different tenses or times in which the action of 
swinging took place, and at the same time we have the central 
idea of swinging connected with the consonants sw-ng : just 
so, if in some primitive language the consonants f-1 expressed 
the central idea of flowing, "flo" might have stood for the 
verb " to flow," " flil " for the substantive, river, and " fla " for 



THE GKOWTH OF LANGUAGE. 41 

some adjective or attribute common to flowing water, bright 
perhaps, or soft. 

Even with quite modern and cultivated languages — which 
are not, of course, the best for studying the early history of 
human speech — we may trace the way in which the consonants 
remain the same, or slightly changed, while the vowels alter, 
as when we recognise the German knecht in our knight, raurn in 
our room; or, again, the Italian padre in the French pere, 
tavola in table, &c. Such comparisons as these show us that 
English and German, French and Italian, are closely connected. 
But where the connection between languages is very distant, 
and the farther we have to go back, the more have we to 
divide our words into their composing syllables so that we are 
going backwards towards the root-sounds of language, and these 
as we have said, are single syllables, of which the most con- 
stant parts are the consonants. Here our knowledge stops. 
Of all the changes which were rung upon any particular 
arrangement of letters, " f-1 " say, we cannot possibly deter- 
mine which was the first, " flo," "flu," "fla," or any other. 
What we actually find in any language, the most primitive 
even, is the existence of these root-consonant-sounds expressing 
some general idea, the idea of flowing, or whatever it may be. 
Probably, as we have said, this ringing the changes upon a 
particular sound may have gone on with any degree of rapidity, 
have been almost simultaneous with the power of speaking itself, 
which power was, we know, simultaneous with the creation 
of man. So that we may practically speak of man as starting 
with these root-sounds, which would expi*ess not a particular, 
but a general idea. Sometimes it is not at all easy to trace 
the connection between the different words which have been 
formed from one of these general roots. From a root, which 
in Sanskrit appears in its most "ancient form, as md, "to 
measure," we get words in Greek and Latin which mean "to 
think," and from the same root comes our "man," the person 
who measures, who compares, i.e., who thinks, also our moon, 
which means " the measurer," because the moon helps to mea- 
sure out the time, the months. So, too, our crab is from the 
word creep, and means the animal that creeps. But why this 
name should have been given to crab rather than to ant and 
beetle it is impossible to say. 

Thus equipped with his fixed root and the various words 
formed out of it, man had enough material to begin all the 



THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

elaborate languages which the world has known. And he con- 
tinued las work something in this fashion. As generation 
followed generation the pronunciation of words was changed, 
as is constantly being done at the present day. Our grand- 
mothers pronounced "Rome," room, and "brooch," as it was 
spelt, and not as we pronounce it — " broach." And let it be 
remembered, before writing was invented, there was nothing 
but the pronunciation to hx the word, and a new pronuncia- 
tion was really a new word. When there was no spelling to 
hx a word, these changes of pronunciation were very rapid 
and frequent, so that not only would each generation have a 
different set of words from their fathers, but probably each 
tribe would be partly unintelligible to its neighbouring tribes, 
just as a Somersetshire man is to a great extent unintelligible 
to a man out of Yorkshire. The first result of these changes 
would be the springing upof a number of "meaningless" words. 
" Head of rock" and " foot of rock " would sink to equivalents 
of " over " and " under," when of two names for head and foot 
one became obsolete as a noun, and was only used adverbi- 
ally. What had originally meant, metaphorically, head of 
rock and foot of rock might come to be used for over and 
under the rock when new words had arisen for head and foot, 
in exactly the same way that the word ar/o has become a 
" meaningless " word to the Englishman of ito day. 

The next step was the joining of words together. In one 
way this process may have begun very early. Two " meaning " 
words, as soon as formed, might be joined together to form 
a third idea ; just as we have "anthill," which is a different 
thing from either "ant" or "hill." But there are other ways 
of joining words more important in the history of language 
than this. There is the joining on of the " meaningless " words. 
Although we always put the meaningless qualifying word 
before the chief word, and say " on the rock," or " under the 
rock," it is more natural to man, as is shown by all languages, 
to put the principal idea first, and say " rock on," " rock under," 
the idea rock being of course the chief idea, the part of the 
rock, or position in relation to the rock, coming after. So 
the first step towards grammar was the getting a number of 
meaningless words, and joining them on to the substantive, 
"rock," "rock by," "rock-in," "rock-to," &c. So with the 
verb. The essential idea in the verb is the action itself, the 
next idea is the time or person in which the action takes place ; 



THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE. 43 

and the natural thing for man to do is to make the words 
follow that order. The joining process would give us from 
love, the idea of loving, "love-I," " love-thou," "love-he," &c, 
and for the imperfect " love-was-I," " love-was-thou," " love- 
was-he," " love- was- we," " love-was-ye," " love- was-they," for 
perfect "love-have-I," " love-have-thou," " love-have-he," &c. 
Of course, these are merely illustrations, but they make the 
mode of this early joining process clearer than if we had 
chosen a language where that process is. actually found in its 
purity, and then translated the forms into their English 
equivalents. 

We have now arrived at a stage in the formation of lan- 
guage where both meaning and meaningless words have been 
introduced, and where words have been made up out of com- 
binations of the two. We see at once that with regard to 
meaningless words the use of them wduld naturally be fixed 
very much by tradition and custom, and whereas there might 
be a great many words standing for ant and hill, and therefore 
a great many ways of saying ant-hill, for the meaningless 
words, such as under and on, there would probably be only 
one word. The reason of this is very plain. While all the 
separate synonyms for hill, expressed different ways in which 
it struck th.3 mind, either as being high, or large, or steep, or 
what not, for under and on being meaningless words not 
producing any picture in the mind, only one word apiece could 
very well he used. While under and on were meaning words, 
meaning, perhaps, as we imagined, head of, or foot of, there 
would be plenty of synonyms for them ; but only one out of 
all these would be handed down in their meaningless forms. 
It is important to remember this, because this accounts for 
all the grammars of all languages. As a matter of fact, 
every one of those grammatical terminations which we know 
so well in Latin and Greek, and German, was originally 
nothing else than meaningless words added on to modify 
the words which still retained their meaning. We saw 
before, that it was much more natural for people to say 
"rock-on" or " hand in " than "on the rock" or "in the 
hand" — though, of course, our arrangement of the words 
seems the most reasonable to us — because rock and hand were 
the most important ideas and came first into the mind, while 
on, in, &c, were only subsidiary ideas depending upon the 
important ones. If we stop at rock or hand without adding 



44 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

on and in, we have still got something definite upon which 
our thoughts can rest, but we could not possibly stop at on 
and in alone, and have any idea in our minds at all. It is 
plain enough therefore that, though we say " on the rock," 
we must have the idea of all the three words in our mind 
before we begin the phrase, and therefore that our words do 
not follow the natural order of our ideas ; whereas rock-on, 
hand-in, show the ideas just in the way they come into the 
mind. It is a fact that all case-endings arose from adding on 
meaningless words to the end of the word, the noun or 
pronoun. Das Weib, des Weib-es, dem Weib-e ; hom-o, hom-inis, 
hom-ini : the meanings of case-endings such as these cannot, 
it is true, be discovered now, for they came into existence 
long before such languages as German or Latin were spoken, 
and their meanings were lost sight of in ages which passed 
before history. But that time when the terminations which 
are meaningless now had a meaning, and the period of transi- 
tion between -this state and the state of a language which is 
full of grammatical changes inexplicable to those who use 
them,^ form distinct epochs in the history of every language. 
It is just the same with verb-endings as with the case-endings 
— ich bin, da hist, really express the I and thou twice over, as 
the pronouns exist though hidden and lost sight of in the -n 
and -st of the verb. In the case of verbs, indeed, we may 
without going far give some idea of how these endings may 
be detected. We may say at once that Sanskrit, Persian, 
Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, English, 
Norse, Gaelic, Welsh, Lithuanian, Russian, and other Sla- 
vonic languages are all connected together in various degrees 
of relationship, all descended from one common ancestor, some 
being close cousins, and some very distant. Now in Sanskrit 
" I am " is thus declined : — 

as-mi I am. 's-mas we are. 

a-si thou art. 's-tha ye are. 

as-ti he is. 's-anti they are. 

By separating the root from the ending in this way we may 
the more easily detect the additions to the root, and their 
meanings. As is the root expressing the idea of being, exist- 
ing ; mi is from a root meaning / (preserved in me, Greek and 
Lat. me, moi, m[ich], &c.) j so we get as-mi, am-I, or I am. 
Then we may trace this through a number of languages 



THE GEOWTH OF LANGUAGE. 45 

connected with the Sanskrit. The important part of as-mi, the 
consonants, are preserved in the Latin sum, I am, from which, 
by some further changes come the French suis, the Italian 
sono : the same word appears in our a-m, and in the Greek 
eirai (Doric esmi), I am. Next, coming to the second word, we 
see one of the s's cut out, and we get as>, in which the a is 
the root, and the si the addition signifying thou. To this 
addition correspond the final s's in the Latin es, French es — tu 
es, and the Greek eis (Doric essi). So, again, as-ti, the ti ex- 
presses he, and this corresponds to the Latin est, French est, 
the Greek est i, the German ist ; in the English the expressive 
t has been lost. We will not continue the comparison of 
each word ; it will be sufficient if we place side by side the 
same tense in Sanskrit and in Latin, 1 and give those who do 
not know Latin an opportunity of recognising for themselves 
the tense in its changed form in French or Italian : — 



English. 


Sanskrit. 


Latin. 


I am 


as-mi 


sum. 


thou art 


a-si 


es. 


lie is 


as-ti 


est. 


we are 


's-mas 


sumus 


ye are 


's-tha 


estis. 


they are 


's-anti 


sunt 



The plural of the added portion we see contains the letters 
m-s, and if we split these up again we get the separate roots 
mi and si, so that mas means most literally " I," and " thou," 
and hence "we." In the second person the Latin has pre- 
served an older form than the Sanskrit ; the proper root-con- 
sonants for the addition part of the second person plural, 
combining the ideas thou and he, from which, ye. The 
third person plural cannot be so easily explained. 

It will be seen that in the English almost all likeness to 
the Sanskrit terminations has been lost. Our verb " to be " 
is very irregular, being, in fact, a mixture of several distinct 
verbs. The Saxon had the verb beb contracted from beom 
(here we have at any rate the m ending for I), I am, byst, thou 
art, bi/dk, he is, and the same appear in the German bin, hist. 
It is, of course, very difficult to trace the remains of the 
meaningless additions in such advanced languages as ours, or 

1 The reader who does not know Latin may easily recognise the kindred 
forms changed in French, Italian, Spanish, &c. 



4G THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

even as Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek. Nevertheless, the reader 
may find it not uninteresting to trace in the Latin through 
most of the tenses of verbs these endings — in, for I, the first 
person ; s, for thou, the second person ; t, for he, the third 
person ; m-s, for I and thou, we ; st, for ye, thou and he, ye ; 
nt, for they. And the same reader must be content to take 
on trust the fact that other additions corresponding to differ- 
ent tenses can also be shown or reasonably guessed to have 
been words expressive by themselves of the idea which belongs 
to the particular tense ; so that where we have such a 
tense as 

amuham I was loving. 

amabas thou wast loving. 

amabat, &c. he was loving. 

we may recognise the meanings of the component parts 
thus : — 

ama-ba-m love-was-I. 

ama-ba-s love-was-thou. 

ama-ba-t love-was-hc. 

" Of course, really to show the way in which these meaningless 
additions have been made and come to be amalgamated with 
the root, we should have to take examples from a great 
number of languages in different stages of development. 
But we have thought it easier, for mere explanation, to take 
only such languages as were likely to be familiar to the 
reader, and even to supplement these examples with imagin- 
ary ones — like "rock-on," "love-was-I," &c. — in English. 
For our object has been at first merely to give an intelligible 
account of how language has been formed, of the different 
stages it has passed through, and to leave to a future time 
the question as to which languages of the globe have passed 
through all these stages, and which have gone part of their 
way in the formation of a perfect language. Between the 
state of a language in which the meaning of all the separate 
parts of a word are recognised and that state where they 
are entirely lost, there is an immense gap, that indeed which 
separates the most from the least advanced languages of the 
world. 

Every language that is now spoken on the globe has gone 



THE GEOWTH OF LANGUAGE. 47 

through the stage of forming meaningless words, and is there- 
fore possessed of words of both classes. They no longer say 
" head-of-rock " or " foot-of-rock," but "rock-on" and "rock- 
under." But there are still known languages in which every 
syllable is a word and where grammar properly speaking does 
not exist. For grammar, if we come to consider it exactly, is 
the explanation of the meaning of those added syllables or 
letters which have lost all natural meaning of their own. 
If each part of the word were as clear and as intelligible as 
"rock-on" we should have no need of a grammar at all. A 
language of this sort is called a monosyllabic language, not 
because the people only speak in monosyllables, but because 
each word, however compound, can be split up into mono- 
syllables which have a distinctly recognisable meaning. 
" Ant-hill-on " or " love-was-I," are like the words of such a 
language. 

The next stage of growth is where the meaning of the 
added parts has been lost sight of, except when it is con- 
nected with the word which it modifies ; but where the 
essential word has a distinct idea by itself, and without the 
help of any addition. Suppose, for instance, through ages of 
change the " was-I " in our imaginary example got corrupted 
into "wasi," where wasi had no meaning by itself, but was 
used to express the first person of the past tense. The first 
person past of love would be " love- wasi,' of move " move- 
wasi," and so on, "wasi" no longer having a meaning by 
itself, but "love" and "move" by themselves being perfectly 
understandable. A language in this stage is said to be in the 
agglutinative stage, because certain grammatical endings (like 
" wasi ") are merely as it were glued on to a root to change its 
meaning, while the root itself remains quite unaffected, and 
means neither less nor more than it did before. 

But, as ages pass on, the root and the addition get so 
closely combined that neither of them alone has a distinct 
meaning, and the language arrives at its third stage. It is 
not difficult to find examples of a language in this condition, 
for such is the case with all the languages by which we are 
surrounded. All the tongues which the majority of us are 
likely to study, almost all those which have any literature at 
all, have arrived at this last stage, which is called the in- 
flexional. For instance, though we were able to separate 
" asmi " into two parts — " as " and " mi " — one expressing the 



48 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

idea of being, the other the person "I," this distinction is 
the refinement of the grammarian, and would never have 
been recognised by an ordinary speaker of Sanskrit, for 
whom "asmi" simply meant "I am," without distinction of 
parts. In our "am" the grammarian recognises that the 
"a" expresses existence, and the "m" expresses I; but so 
completely have we lost sight of this, that we repeat the 'I " 
before the verb. Just the same in Latin. ISTo Roman could 
have recognised in the "s" of sum "am" and in the "m" 
" I " ; for him sum meant simply and purely " I am." " I " 
was no more separable in his eyes than the French etes (Latin 
estis) in vous etes, is separable into a root " es," contracted in 
the French into "e," meaning are, and an addition " tes " 
signifying you. This, then, is the last stage upon which 
language enters. It is called inflexional, because the different 
grammatical changes are not now denoted by a mere addition to 
an intelligible word, but by a change in the word itself. The 
root may indeed remain and be recognisable in its purity, but 
very frequently it is unrecognisable, so that the different case 
or tense endings can no longer be looked upon as additions, 
but as changes. Take almost any Latin substantive, and we 
see this : homo, a man, the genitive is formed, not by adding 
something to homo, but by changing homo into hominis, or, if 
we please, adding something to the root horn — which has in 
itself no meaning. 

Thus, to recapitulate, we discover first two stages which 
language went through before it presents itself in any form 
known to us : what we call the meaning words came into 
existence, and then out of these were gradually formed the 
meaningless words. 

These stages were in the main passed through before any 
known language came into existence, for there is no tongue 
which is not composed in part of words from the meaningless 
class : though at the same time it is a process which is still 
going on, as where even and just the adjectives become even and 
just the adverbs, or where the French substantives 'pas and 
point take a like change of meaning. Then after the mean- 
ingless words have been acquired come the three other stages 
which go to the making of the grammar of a language, stages 
which can be traced in actual living languages, and which 
have been called the monosyllabic, the agglutinative, and the 
inflexional stage. With the last of these the history of the 



THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE. 49 

growth of language comes to an end. It happens indeed, 
sometimes, that a language which has arrived at the inflexional 
stage may in time come to drop nearly all its inflexions. This 
has been the case with English and French. Both are descended 
from languages which had elaborate grammars — the Saxon and 
the Latin ; but both, from a mixture of languages and other 
causes, have come to drop almost all their grammatical forms. 
We show our grammar only in a few changes in our ordinary 
verbs — the past tense and the past participle, use, used; 
buy, bought, &c. ; in other variations in our auxiliary verb, 
and by changes in our pronouns — /, me, ye, you, who, whom, 
&c. ; and by the " 's " and "s" of the possessive case and 
of the plural, and by the comparison of adjectives. The 
French preserve their grammar to some extent in their pro- 
nouns, their adjectives, and in their verbs. But these are 
cases of decay, and do not find any place in the history of the 
growth of language. 

From this we pass on to examine where the growth of lan- 
guage has been fully achieved, where it has remained onl 
stunted and imperfect. 



CHAPTER IV. 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 



Let us recall for a moment the conclusion of the last 
chapter, and what was said of the different stages of growth 
thi'ough which a language must pass before it arrives at such 
a condition as that in which are all the tongues with which 
most of us are likely to be familiar. We found that there 
were first two very early stages when what may be called the 
bones of a language were formed, namely, the acquisition first 
of the meaning words, those words which standing alone bring 
a definite idea into the mind, as pen, ink, paper ; secondly, of 
the meaningless words, which, like to, fur, and, produce no 
idea in the mind when taken quite alone. And we saw that 
while the first class of words may have rapidly sprung into 
existence one after another, the meaningless words could 
only have gradually come into use, as one by one they fell 
out of the rank of the meaning class. Again, after this 
skeleton of language had been got together, there were three 
other stages, we said, which went to make up the grammar 
of language. The first, the monosyllabic stage, where any 
word of the language may be divided into monosyllables, 
each having a distinct meaning ; the second, the agglutinative 
stage, where the root, that is to say the part of the word which 
expresses the essential idea, always remains distinct from the 
additions that modify it ; and thirdly, the inflexional stage, 
where the root and the inflexions have got so interwoven as 
to be no longer distinguishable. 

Of course, really to understand what these three conditions 
are like, the reader would have to be acquainted with some 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 51 

language in each of the three : but it is sufficient if we get 
clearly into our heads that there are these stages of language - 
growth, and that, further, each one of all the languages of 
the world may be said to be in one of the three. Our oppor- 
tunities of tracing the history of languages being so limited, 
we have no recorded instance of a language passing out of one 
stage into another ; but when we examine into these states 
they so clearly wear the appearance of stages that there seems 
every reason to believe that a monosyllabic language might in 
time develop into an agglutinative, and again from that stage 
into an inflexional, language, if nothing stopped its growth. 

But what, we may ask, are the causes which put a stop to the 
free growth and development of language 1 One of these causes 
is the invention of writing. Language itself is of course spoken 
language,, speech, and as such is subject to no laws save 
those which belong to our organs of speaking and hearing. 
No sooner is the word spoken than it is gone, and lives only 
in the memory ; and thus speech, though it may last for 
centuries, dies, as it were, and comes to life again every 
hour. It is with language as it is with those national songs 
and ballads which among nations that have no writing take the 
place of books and histories. The same poem or the same tale 
passes from mouth to mouth almost unchanged for hundreds 
of years, and yet at no moment is it visible and tangible, 
nor for the most part of the time audible even, but for these 
centuries lives on in men's memories only. So Homer's ballads 
must have passed for several hundred years from mouth to 
mouth ; and, stranger still, stories which were first told some- 
where by the banks of the Oxus or the Jaxartes by distant 
ancestors of ours, are told to this very day, little altered, by 
peasants in remote districts of England and Scotland- But 
to return to language. It is very clear that so long as language 
remains speech and speech only, it is subject to just so many 
variations as in the course of a generation or two men may 
have introduced into their habits of speaking, "Why these 
variations arise it is perhaps not quite easy to understand.; 
but every one knows that they do arise, that from age to age, 
from generation to generation, not only are new words being 
constantly introduced, and others which once served well 
enough dropped out of use, but constant changes are going 
on in the pronunciation of words. Nay, if' left to itself a 
language would not remain quite the same in two different; 

E.2 



52 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

districts ; as we know, for instance, that the language of 
common people does differ very much in different counties, 
so that what with varieties of pronunciation, and what 
with the use of really peculiar words, the inhabitants of 
one county are scarcely intelligible to the inhabitants of 
another. The influence which keeps a language together and 
tends to make the changes as few as possible is that of writing. 
When once writing has been invented it is clear that language 
no longer depends upon the memory only, no longer has such 
a seemingly precarious tenure of life as it had when it was no 
more than speech. The writing remains a sure mark against 
the changes of time. Although our written words are but the 
symbols of sound, they are symbols so clear that the recollec- 
tion of the sound springs up in our minds the moment the 
written word comes before our eyes. So it is that there are 
hundreds of words in the English language which we should 
many of us not use once in a lifetime, which are yet perfectly 
familiar to us. All old-fashioned words which belong to 
the literary language, and are never used now in common 
life, would have been forgotten long ago except for writing. 
So too the fact that those provincialisms which make the 
peasants of different counties almost mutually unintelligible 
do not affect the intercourse of educated people, is owing to 
the existence of a written language. 

"We see therefore the power which writing has of binding 
together speech and preventing it from slipping into dialects, 
of keeping the language rich by preserving words which in 
common everyday life are apt to be forgotten. But writing 
may also have a disastrous effect upon an unformed language 
by checking changes which tend to development, and this is 
just what has happened in the case of Chinese. We know 
what a strange people the Chinese are, and how they seemed 
to have stopped growing just at one particular point, and, 
with all the machinery, so to speak, ready to make them a 
great people, how they have remained for ever a stunted, 
undeveloped race, devoid of greatness in any form. Their 
character is reflected very accurately in their language. 
While this was still in the first of our three stages — the mono- 
syllabic — the Chinese invented writing, and from that time 
the language almost ceased to develop, so that it is the best 
specimen we have of a language in this state. Speaking quite 
strictly, the ancient Chinese is the only monosyllabic language. 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 53 

Modern Chinese, Burmese, Siamese, and Thibetan are so nearly 
monosyllabic that they cannot be considered to have got fairly 
into the agglutinative stage, and perhaps they never will. 

As a matter of fact, then, it is writing which has preserved 
for us a language in the monosyllabic stage, and perhaps 
nothing but writing could have prevented such a language 
from in time becoming agglutinative. Other causes are at 
work to pi-event an agglutinative language becoming inflexional. 
It is not in this case so easy to say what the hindering causes 
are : but perhaps, if we look at the difference between the last 
two classes of language, we get some idea. An inflexional 
language has quite lost the memory of the real meaning of its 
inflexions — or at least the real reason of them. We could 
give no reason why we should not use bought in the place of 
buy, art in the place of am, whom in the place of who — no other 
reason save that we have always been taught to use the words 
in the position they take in our speech. But there was once 
a time when the changes only existed in the form of additions 
having a distinct meaning. Even in agglutinative languages 
these additions have a distinct meaning as additions, or in 
other words, if we were using an agglutinative language we 
should be able always to distinguish the addition from the 
root, and so should understand the precise effect of the former 
in modifying the latter. To understand the use of words 
in an agglutinative language a great deal less of tradition 
and memory would be required than are wanted to pre- 
serve an inflected language. This really is the same as 
saying that for the inflected language we must have a much 
more constant use, and this again implies a greater intellectual 
life, a closer bond of union among the people who speak it, than 
exists among those who speak agglutinative languages. Or we 
may look at it another way, and say that the cause of the 
mixing up of the root and its addition came at first from a 
desire to shorten the word and to save time — a desire which was 
natural to people who spoke much and had much intercourse : 
and we guess from these considerations that the people who 
use the agglutinative languages are people who have not what 
is called a close and active national life. This is exactly the 
case. If the one or two monosyllabic languages belong to peoples 
who have, as it were, developed too quickly, the agglutinative 
languages distinguish a vast section of the human race whose 
natural condition is a very unformed one, who are for the 



54 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

most part nomadic races without fixed homes, or laws, or 
states. They live a tribal existence, each man having little 
intercourse save with those of his immediate neighbourhood, 
using no large public assemblies, which might take the place 
of literature, in obliging men to have a common language and 
a united national life. Therefore the different dialects and 
tongues which belong to the agglutinative class are almost 
endless ; and it is not our intention to weary the reader by 
even a bare list of them. But we may glance at the chief 
heads into which these multifarious lauguages may be grouped, 
and the geographical position of those who speak them. These 
include all those peoples of Central Asia whom in common 
language we are wont to speak of as Tartars, but whom it 
would be more correct to describe as belonging to the Turkic 
or Mongol class, and of whom so many different branches— 
the Huns, who emigrated from the borders of China to Europe; 
the Mongols or Moghuls, who conquered Persia and Hindustan ; 
and lastly, the Osmanlees, or Ottomans, w T ho invaded Europe 
and founded the Turkish Empire — are the most distinguished 
(and most infamous) in history. Another large class of 
agglutinative languages belongs to the natives of the vast 
region of Siberia, from the Ural mountains to the far east. 
Another great class, corresponding to these, the Finnish, once 
spread across the whole of what is now European Russia 
and North Scandinavia, but has been gradually driven 
to the extreme north by the Russians and Scandinavians. 
Lastly, a third division is formed by those languages which 
belonged to the original inhabitants of Hindustan before 
the greater part of the country was occupied by the Hindus. 
These languages are spoken of as the Dravidian class. The 
natural condition of these various nations or peoples is, as we 
have said, a nomadic state, though individual nations have 
risen to considerable civilization. And as in very early times 
ancestors of ours who belonged to a race speaking an inflexional 
language bestowed upon some part of these nomadic people the 
appellation Tar a, which means " the swiftness of a horse," from 
their constantly moving from place to place, the word Tura- 
nian has been applied to all these various peoples, and the 
agglutinative languages are spoken of generally as Turanian 
tongues. 

And now we come to the last — the most important body of 
languages — the inflexional, and we see that for it have been 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 55 

left all the more important nations and languages of the world. 
Almost all the " historic," people, living or dead, almost all 
the more civilized among nations, come under this our last 
division : the ancient Egyptians, Chaldseans, Assyrians, 
Persians, Greeks, and Romans, as well as the modern Hindus 
and the native Persians, and almost all the inhabitants of 
Europe, with the countless colonies which these last have 
spread over the surface of the globe. Inflexional languages 
are separated into two main divisions or families, inside each 
of which the languages are held by a tie of relationship. Just 
as people are of the same family when they recognise their 
descent from a common ancestor, so languages belong to one 
family when they can show clear signs that they have 
grown out of one parent tongue. We may be sure that we are 
all the children of the first pair, and we may know in the same 
way that all languages must have grown and changed out of 
the first speech. But the traces of parentage and relationship 
.are in both cases buried in oblivion ; it is only when we come 
much farther down in the history of the world that we can 
really see the marks of distinct kinship in the tongues of 
nations separated by thousands of miles, different in colour, 
in habits, in civilization, and quite unconscious of any common 
fatherhood. 

Now as to the way in which this kinship among languages 
may be detected. Among some languages there is such a 
close relationship that even an unskilled eye can discover 
it. When we see, for instance, such likenesses as exist in 
English and German between the very commonest words of 
life — kann and can, soil and Shall, muss and must, ist and is, gut 
and good, hart and hard, mann and man, fur and for, together 
with an innumerable number of verbs, adjectives, substantives, 
prepositions, &c, which differ but slightly one from another — 
we may feel sure either that the English once spoke German, 
that the Germans once spoke English, or that English and 
German have both become a little altered from a lost language 
which was spoken by the ancestors of the present inhabitants 
of England and Deutsch-land. As a matter of fact the last 
is the case. English and German are brother languages, 
neither is the parent of the other. Now having our attention 
once called to this relationship, we might, any of us who know 
English and German, at once set about making a long list of 
words which are common to the two languages ; and it would 



56 



THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 



not be a bad amusement for any reader just to turn over the 
leaves of a dictionary and note bow many German words 
(especially of tbe common sort) tbey find tbat bave a corre- 
sponding one in English. Tbe first tbing we begin to see is 
the fact wbicb was insisted on in the last chapter, that the 
consonants form, as it were, the bones of a word, and that 
changes of vowel are comparatively unimportant provided 
these remain unaltered. The next thing we see is that even 
the consonants do not generally remain the same, but that in 
place of one such letter in one language, another of a sound 
very like it appears in the other language. 

For instance, we soon begin to notice that " t " in German 
is often represented by " d " in English, as tag becomes day ; 
tochter, daughter ; breit, broad ; traum, dream; reiten, ride ; but 
sometimes by " th ";in English, as vater becomes father ; mtdter, 
mother. Again, " d " in German is often equal to " th " in 
English, as dor/, thorpe ; feder, feather; dreschen, thrash; 
drangen, throng; das, that. Now there is a certain likeness 
common to these three sounds, " t," "d," and "th," as any 
one's ear will tell him if he say te, de, the. As a matter 
of fact they are all pronounced with the tongue pressed against 
the teeth, only in rather different places ; and in tbe case of 
the last sound, the, 1 with a breath or aspirate sent between 
the teeth at the same time. So we see that, these letters being 
really so much alike in sound, there is nothing at all extra- 
ordinary in one sound becoming exchanged for another in tbe 
two languages. We learn, therefore, to look beyond the mere 
appearance of the word, to weigh, so to speak, the sounds 
against each other, and to detect likenesses which might 
perhaps otherwise have escaped us. For instance, if we see 
that " ch " in German is often represented by " gh " in Eng- 
lish—in such words as tochter, daughter; knecht, knight ;- 
mochte, might; lachen, laugh,~we have no difficulty in now seeing 
how exactly durch corresponds to our " through," the position 
of the vowels being a matter of comparatively small account. 
So our power of comparison continually increases, though some 

1 T "S et * he ful1 sound of the th, this should be said not as we pronounce 
our article the (which really has the sound dhe), but like the first part of 
lliebes, theme, &c. 

2 Th . e se two words have, it is true, quite changed their meanings; but 
ouv kmglit rose to its honourable sense from having come to be used only 
ior the servants or attendants of the king (in battle), while the German 
word retained its older sense of servant, groom only 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 57 

knowledge of several languages is necessary before we can 
establish satisfactory rules or proceed with at all sure steps. 

When we have acquired this knowledge there are few things 
more interesting than noting the changes which words undergo 
in the different tongues, and learning how to detect the same 
word under various disguises. The interest is very great 
sometimes, for instance, in the case of proper names. The 
smaller family — or, as we have used the word family to express 
a large class of languages, let us say the branch to which 
English and German belong — is called the Teutonic branch. 
To it belonged nearly all those barbarian nations who, 
towards the fall of the Roman empire, began the invasion of 
her territories, and ended by carving out of them most of the 
various states and kingdoms of modern Europe. The best test 
we have of the nationalities of these peoples, the best proof 
that they were connected by language with each other and 
with the modern Teutonic nations, is to be found in their 
proper names. We have, for instance, among the Vandals 
such names as Hilderic, Genseric, and the like ; we compare 
them at once with Theodoric and Alaric, which were names 
of famous Goths. Then as the Gothic language has been 
preserved we recognise the termination r%k or riks in Gothic, 
meaning a " king," and connected with the German reich, and 
also with the Latin rex — Alaric becomes al-rih, " all- king," 
universal king. In Theodoric we recognise the Gothic thiuda- 
rik, "king of the people." Again, this Gothic word thiuda is 
really the same as the German deutsch, or as " Dutch," of 
which also "Teutonic" is only a Latinised form. In the same 
way the Hilda-rik in Gothic is " king of battles " ; and having 
got this word from the Vandals we have not much difficulty 
in recognising Childeric, the name of a Frankish king, as the 
same word. This change teaches us to turn " ch " of Frankish 
names into "h," 'so that instead of Chlovis we first get Hlovis, 
which is only a softened form of Hludvig, or Hludwig, the 
modern Luclwig, our Louis. Hlud is known to have meant 
"famous" 1 and wig a "warrior," so that Ludwig means 
famous warrior. The same verb " wig " seems to appear in 
the word Merovingian, a Latinised form of Meer-wig, 2 which 
would mean sea- warrior. 

These instances show us the kind of results we obtain by 

1 Cf. the Greek Idutos. 

3 Stephen, Lectures on the History of France. 



58 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

a comparison of languages. In the case of these names, for 
instance, we have got enough to show a very close relationship 
amongst the Vandals, the Goths, and the Franks, and had we 
time many more instances might have been chosen to support 
this conclusion. Here, of course, we have been confining 
ourselves to one small branch of a large family. The road, 
the farther we go, is beset with greater difficulties and dangers 
of mistake, and the student can do little unless he is guided 
by fixed rules, which we should have to follow, supposing we 
were able to carry on our inquiries into many and distant 
languages. Those words which we have instanced as being 
common to us and to German, we have both got by inheritance 
from an earlier language. Yet there are in English hundreds 
of words which are not acquired by inheritance from other 
languages, but merely by adoption ; hundreds of words have 
been taken directly from the Latin, or from the Latin through 
the French, or from the Greek, and not derived from any early 
language which was the parent of the Latin, Greek, and 
English. How shall we distinguish between these classes of 
words 1 In the first place, the simpler words are almost 
sure to be inherited, because people, in however rude a 
state they were, could never have done without words to 
express such everyday ideas as to have, to be, to laugh, to make, 
to kill — /, thou, to, for, and ; whereas they might have done well 
enough without words such as government, literature, sensation, 
expression, words which express either things which were quite 
out of the way of these primitive people, or commonish ideas 
in a somewhat grand and abstract form. Our first rule, 
therefore, must be to choose the commoner class of words, or 
generally speaking, those words which are pretty sure never 
to have fallen out of use, and which therefore must have been 
handed down from father to son. 

There is another rule — that those languages must be classed 
together which have like grammatical forms. This is the rule 
of especial importance in distinguishing a complete family of 
languages. For when once a language has got into the in- 
flected stage, though it may hereafter lose or greatly modify 
nearly all its inflexions, it never either sinks back into the 
agglutinative stage, or adopts the grammatical forms of another 
language which is also in the inflected condition. These are 
the general rules, therefore, upon which we go. We look first 
for the grammatical forms and then for the simple roots, and 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE 59 

according to the resemblance or want of resemblance between 
them we decide whether two tongues have any relationship, 
and whether that relationship is near or distant. 

Now it has in this way been found out that all inflected 
languages belong to one of two families called the Semitic and 
the Aryan. Let us begin with the Semitic. This word, 
which is only a Latinised way of saying Shemite, is given to 
the nations who are supposed to be descended from Shem, 
the second son of Noah. The nations who have spoken 
languages belonging to this Semitic family have been those 
who appear so much in Old Testament history, and who played 
a mighty part in the world while our own ancestors were still 
wandering tribes, and at an age when darkness still obscured 
the doings of the Greeks and Romans. Foremost among all 
in point of age and fame stand the Egyptians, the earliest of 
whose recorded kings, Menes, is believed to date back as far 
as 5000 B.C. Next in antiquity come the Chaldseans, who 
have left behind them great monuments in the ancient cities 
Erech and XJr, and their successors the Assyrians and Babylo- 
nians. Abraham himself, we know, was a Chaldsean, and from 
him descended the Hebrew nation, who were destined to shed 
the highest honour on the Semitic race. Yet, so great may 
be the degeneration of some races and the rise of others, so 
great may be the divisions which thus spring up between 
peoples who were once akin, it is also true that all those 
people, whom the Children of Israel were specially commanded 
to fight against and even to exterminate — the Canaanites, the 
Moabites, and the Edomites — were likewise of Semitic family. 
The Phoenicians are another race from the same stock who 
have made their mark in the world. We know how, coming 
first from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, they led the way in 
the art of navigation, sent colonies to various parts of the 
world, and foremost among these founded Carthage, the rival 
and almost the destroyer of Rome. Our list of celebrated 
Semitic races must close with the Arabs, the founders of 
Mohammedanism, the conquerors at whose name all Europe 
used to tremble, whose kingdoms once extended in an un- 
broken line from Spain to the banks of the Indus. 

Such a list gives no mean place to the Semitic family of 
nations ; but those of the Aryan stock are perhaps even more 
conspicuous. This family (which is sometimes called Japhetic, 
or descendants of Japhet) includes the Hindus and Persians 



60 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

among Asiatic nations, and almost all the peoples of Europe. 
It may seem strange that we English should be related not 
only to the Germans and Dutch and Scandinavians, but to the 
Russians, French, Spanish, Romans, and Greeks as well ; 
stranger still that we can claim kinship with such distant 
peoples as the Persians and Hindus. Yet such is the case, 
and the way in which all these different nations once formed 
a single people, speaking one language, and their subsequent 
dispersion over the diJl'erent parts of the world in which we now 
find them, affords one of the most interesting inquiries within 
the range of pre-historic study. What seems actually to 
have been the case is this : In distant ages, somewhere about 
the rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, and on the north of that 
mountainous range called the Hindoo-Koosh, dwelt the 
ancestors of all the nations we have enumerated, forming 
at this time a single and united people, simple and 
primitive in their way of life, but yet having enough of a 
common national life to preserve a common language. They 
called themselves Aryas or Aryans, a word which, in its very 
earliest sense, seems to have meant those who move upwards, 
or straight ; and hence, probably, came to stand for the noble 
race as compared with other races on whom, of course, they 
would look down. 

How long these Aryans had lived united in this their early 
home it is, of course, impossible to say ; but as the tribes and 
families increased in numbers, a separation would.naturally take 
place. Large associations of clans would move into more distant 
districts, the connection between the various bodies which made 
up the nation would be less close, their dialects would begin to 
vary, and thus the seeds of new nations and languages would 
be sown. The beginning of such a separation was a distinction 
which arose between a part of the Ai-yan nation, who stayed 
at the foot of the Hindoo-Koosh and mountains, and in all the 
fertile valleys which lie there, and another part which advanced 
farther into the plain. This latter received the name Yavanas, 
which seems to have meant the protectors, and was probably 
given to them because they stood as a sort of foreguard between 
the Aryans, who still dwelt under the shadow of the mountains, 
and the foreign nations of the plains. And now, their ai*ea 
being enlarged, they began to get still more separated from each 
other ; while at the same time, as their numbers increased, 
the space wherein they dwelt became too small for them who 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 61 

had out of one formed many different peoples. Then began a 
series of migrations, in which the collection of tribes who 
spoke one language and formed one people started off to seek 
their fortune in new lands, and thus for ever broke off 
association with their kindred and their old Aryan home. 
One by one the different nations among the Yavanas (the 
protectors) were infected with this new spirit of adventure, 
and though they took different routes, they all travelled 
westward, and arrived in Europe at last. 

A not improbable reason has been suggested for these migra- 
tions. It is known that, in spite of the immense volume of 
water which the Volga is daily pouring into it, the Caspian 
Sea is gradually drying up, and it has been conjectured as 
highly probable that hundreds of years ago the Caspian was 
not only joined to the Sea of Aral, but extended over a large 
district which is now sandy desert. 1 The slow shrinking in its 
bed of this sea would, by decreasing the rainfall, turn what was 
once a fertile country into a desert ; and if we suppose this 
result taking place while the Aryan nations were gradually 
increasing in numbers, the effect would be to drive them, in 
despair of finding subsistence in the ever-narrowing fertile 
tract between the desert and the mountains, to seek for new 
homes elsewhere. This, at any rate, is what they did. First 
among them, in all probability, started the Kelts or Celts, 
who, travelling perhaps to the south of the Caspian and the 
north of the Black Sea, found their way to Europe, and 
spread far on to the extreme west. At one time it is most 
likely that the greater part of Europe was inhabited by Kelts, 
who either exterminated or partly mingled with the stone-age 
men whom they found there. As far as we know of their 
actual extension in historic times, however, we find this Keltic 
family living in the north of Italy, in Switzerland, over all 
the continent of Europe west of the Rhine, and in the 
British Isles. For the Gauls, who then inhabited the northern 
part of continental Europe west of the Rhine, the ancient 
Britons, and probably the Iberians, the ancient inhabitants of 
Spain, belonged to this family. The Highland Scotch, who ' 
belong to the old blood, call themselves Gaels, and their 
language Gaelic, which is moreover so like the old Irish 
language that a Highlander could make himself understood 

1 See Chap. i. 



62 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

in Ireland ; perhaps he might do so in Wales, where the 
inhabitants are likewise Kelts. This word Gael is practically 
the same as Gaul. In the earliest times of the Roman 
republic the Gauls, as we know, inhabited ail the north of 
Italy, and used often to make successful incursions down the 
very centre of the peninsula. Beyond the Alps they extended 
right up into Belgium, which formed part of ancient Gaul. 
So much for the Kelts. 

Another of the great families who left the Aryan home 
was the Pelasgic, or the Grseco-Italic. These, journeying along 
first southwards and then to the west, passed through Asia 
Minor, on to the countries of Greece and Italy, and in time 
separated into those two great peoples, the Greeks (or Hellenes, 
as they came to call themselves) and the Romans. How little 
did these rival nations deem that they had once been brothers 
and travelled together in search of new homes ! All recollec- 
tion of these early journey ings were lost to the Greeks and 
Romans, who, when we find them in historic times, had 
invented quite different stories to account for their origin. 

Next we come to two other great families of nations who 
seem to have taken the same route at first, and perhaps began 
their travels together as the Greeks and Romans did. These 
are the Teutons and the Slaves. They seem to have travelled 
by the north of the Caspian and Black Sea, extending over all 
the south of Russia, and down to the borders of Greece ; then 
gradually to have pushed on to Europe, ousting the Kelts from 
the eastern portion, until we find them in the historical period 
threatening the borders of the Roman empire on the Rhine and 
the Danube. Probably the Teutons pushed on most to the 
west, and left the Slaves behind. For of the nations who from 
the beginning of the fifth century of our era began the final 
invasion and dismemberment of the Roman empire, the majority 
seem to have been Teuton. We have already said what are 
the nations which compose the Teutonic, or be it, for the words 
are the same, the Deutsch, or Dutch family. They are the 
Scandinavians — that is to say, the inhabitants of Sweden, 
Norway, Denmark and Iceland, the English, the Dutch and 
Flemings (most of the old Keltic inhabitants of Belgium had 
been driven out subsequently by Teutonic invaders), and the 
Germans. Lastly, we come to the Slavonians (Slaves), about 
whom we have been hearing a good deal in the papers lately. 
This name has no etymological connection, as is sometimes 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 63 

ignorantly said, with our word slave, which has dropped out a 
c between the s and the I. The word Slave conies from sloivan, 
which in old Slavonian meant to speak, and was given by the 
Slavonians to themselves as the people who could speak, in 
opposition to other nations whom, as they were not able to 
understand them, they were pleased to consider as dumb. 
The Greek word barbaroi (whence our " barbarians ") arose, in 
obedience to a like prejudice, only from an imitation of babbling* 
such as is made by saying " bar-bar-bar." The Slavons pro- 
bably never got farther westward than Bohemia and the 
north-east of Germany : the greater part of modern Prussia 
was inhabited by Slaves till about the thirteenth or fourteenth 
centuries. But they spread northward, driving before them 
the Turanian Lapps and Finns, and southward over all those 
Turkish provinces about which there is now so much dispute, 
and again westward into Poland and Bohemia. At the 
present day the inhabitants of Russia, Poland, Livonia, 
Lithuania, Bohemia, and most of the South Danubian 
provinces speak different dialects of the Slavonian tongue. 

After he has thus classed the different families of nations, 
another mine of almost infinite wealth is open to the researches 
of the philologist — a mine too which has at present been only 
broached. He soon learns the laws governing the changes of 
sound from one tongue into another. We have noticed some 
of these experimental laws in the simple relationships as 
between English and German, where "tag" becomes "day," 
" dorf " " thorpe," and the like ; and all relationships of 
language are answerable to similar rules. There are laws for 
the change of sound from Sanskrit into the primitive forms of 
Greek, Latin, German, English, &c, just as there are laws of 
change between the first two or the last two. 1 So we soon 
learn to recognise a word in one language which reappears in 
altered guise in another. And it may be well guessed how 
valuable such knowledge may be made. If the word signify some 
common object, a weapon, a tool, an animal, a house, it is not 
over-likely that it will have changed from the time when it was 
first employed : the words of present employment, we know, 
have little tendency to change. So that the time when this 

1 The principal among these laws were elaborated by Jacob Grimm, and 
hence called ' ' Grimm's laws. " They may be seen in his Teutonic Grammar, 
and also in his History of the German Tongue. 



G4 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

word was first used is in all probability tbe time when the 
thing was first known to primitive man ; and if the word is 
common to the whole Aryan family, or if it is peculiar to a 
portion only, then the thing was known or unknown before 
the separation of the Aryan folk. It might well have happened 
that when the migrations began our ancestors were still like the 
stone-age men of the shell-mounds, still in the hunter con- 
dition ; that they knew nothing of domesticated animals, or of 
pastures and husbandmen : or it might be again that they had 
left the pastoral state long behind, and that all their ideas 
associated themselves with agriculture, with the division of 
the land, and with the recurring seasons for planting. But 
language shows us that they had at most only begun some 
attempts at cultivation, as a supplement to their natural means 
of livelihood, their flocks and herds : for among the words 
common to the whole Aryan race there are scarcely any con- 
nected with farming, whereas they are redolent of the herd, 
the cattle-fold, the herdsman, the milking-time. Even the 
word daughter, which corresponds to the Greek thv.gater 
and the Sanskrit dvhitar, means in the last language "the 
milker," and that seems to throwback the practice of milking 
to a vastly remote antiquity. 1 

On the other hand, the various Indo-European branches 
have different names for the plough, one name for the German 
races, another for the Grseco-Italic, and for the Sanskrit. And 
though aratrum has a clear connection with a Sanskrit root 
ar, it is not absolutely certain that it ever had in this language 
the sense of ploughing, and not merely of wounding, whence 
came the expression for ploughing as of wounding the earth. 

Or say we wish to form some notion of the social life of 
the Aryans. Had they extended ideas of tribal government 1 
Had they kings, or were they held together only by the" units 
of family life % Our answer would come from an examination 
of their common word for "king." If they have no common 
word, then we may guess that the title and office of kingship 
arose among the separate Aryan people and received a name 

1 Because they would be hardly like to give a fresh name to such an 
intimate relationship as the daughter. On the other hand, it seems neces- 
sary that the Aryan race must have been in the hunter state at some period, 
and equally necessary that they must then have had a word for daughter. 
Milking, it may be urged,, might be practised before the domestication of 
animals. 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 65 

from each. Or is it that their common word for king had 
rirst some simpler signification, "father," perhaps, showing that 
among the Aryan folk the social bond was still confined 
within the real or imaginary boundary of the family ? But 
in fact we do find a common word for king in several of 
the languages which has no subsidiary meaning less than that 
of directing, or keeping straight. This is the Latin rex, the 
Gothic riks, Sanskrit rig, &c, and its earliest ascertainable 
meaning was " the director." The Aryans then, even in those 
days, acknowledged as supreme 1 some director chosen (probably) 
from out of the tribe, a chief to lead their common war -like or 
migratory expeditions. 

These are but illustrations of the method upon which all 
conclusions touching these our ancestors are founded, and the 
manner of our knowledge concerning them ; far better obtained 
than merely by gazing upon the instruments which have fallen 
from their hands, or the monuments they might have raised 
to commemorate the dead. It is in fact just the difference 
between Shakespeare's statue in "Westminster Abbey and that 
" livelong monument " whereof Milton spoke. By perfecting 
beyond the power of any other race the wonderfully complex 
faculty of speech the Aryans secured that their memory 
should be handed on the more certainly, and with far greater 
completeness, than by records left palpable to men's eyes and 
hands. Many of their secret thoughts might be unlocked by 
the same key. Already the same means are being used to 
give us glimpses of their religious ideas. For the names of 
the common Aryan gods can be arrived at by just the same 
comparative method : it may well happen that a name which 
is only a proper name in one language, can in another be 
traced to a root which unravels its original meaning. It is as 
with the word daughter. Here the Sanskrit root seems to 
unravel the hidden — the lost, and so hidden — meaning in the 
Greek or English words. So with a god, the meaning, hidden 
in the name from those who used it in prayer or praise, 
becomes revealed to us by the divining rod of our science. 

And it is true, nevertheless, that the mine of wealth thus 
opened has as yet been but cursorily explored. 2 There are 

1 Supreme, because his title became a supreme title among these different 
Aryan stocks. 

3 And this without any reproach to the industry of those at work. The 
volumes of Kiihn' 'sZeiischr. furverg. Sjjracliforsclmng, and M. Pictet's fasci- 

F 



66 THE DAWN OF HISTOKY. 

far more and greater fish in this sea than ever came out of it. 
A strictly scientific method might be found for classifying and 
tracing the changes which words undergo. Sometimes a word 
is found greatly modified ; sometimes it survives almost intact 
between the different tongues. There must be some reason 
for this. 

The question might be answered by means of an elaborate 
classification under theheadof the alterations which words have 
experienced, 1 and such a comparative vocabulary would lead 
to the solution of infinite questions concerning the growth of 
nations. We should be able to look almost into the minds 
of people long ago, better than we can examine the minds of 
contemporary races in a lower mental condition, and see what 
ideas took a strong hold upon them, what things they treated 
as realities, what metaphorically, and how large for them was 
the empire of imagination. Then there is the boundless region 
of proper names, both those of persons and geographical names. 
These last in every country bear a certain witness to the races 
who have passed through that country, and show — roughly at 
least — the order of their appearance there. The older geo- 
graphical names are those of natural features, rivers, moun- 
tains, lakes, which have been never absent from the scene ; 
the newer names are given to the works of man. In our own 
country it is so. The names of our rivers (Thames, Ouse, 
Severn, Wye) are Keltic, i.e. British ; those of our towns are 
Teutonic, Saxon, or Norse. Some few Roman names linger 
on, as in the name and termination " Chester " ; but this, as 
meaning a place of strength, shows us cleaidy the reason of 
its survival. Every European country has changed hands, as 
ours has done ; nay, every country in the world. 2 So here 

nating Origines indo-europeennes, are warehouses (let us say, to keep our 
simile intact) which display the treasures already obtained. 

1 Such a book as we have imagined— and which we may soon look for, 
not, alas ! from English, but from German scholarship — would form a 
natural sequel to the principles of comparative grammar as laid down by 
Bopp, &c. It would differ from a mere comparative dictionary in the 
arrangement, showing the nature and extent of modification which each 
word had undergone — where, for instance, Grimm's laws of change hold 
good, where not ; the cases of the survival of archaic forms (agreeable to 
Grimm's second laiv); and, necessarily resulting from such a classification, 
the reasons of such survival among any of the different races. 

2 I have been told that the late Lord Strangford, a great linguist, and a 
comparative philologist to boot, could always find amusement for an idle 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 67 

again we have promise of plenty of work for the philologist 
in compiling a " Glossary of Proper Names " with etymologies. 
Lastly, let it not be forgotten that a great part of all that 
has been done for the Aryan can be done likewise for the 
Semitic languages — a field scarcely yet turned by the plough ; 
and the reader will confess the debt the world is likely some 
day to owe to Comparative Philology. 

half hour in a book of which the reader would probably think, if asked to 
name the most uninteresting of created things — I mean Bradshaw, English 
or foreign ; and his interest lay in extracting the hidden meaning and 
history which lay concealed in these lists of geographical names. 



F 2 



CHAPTER V. 

THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD. 

When we try and gather into one view the results of our 
inquiries upon the kindreds and nations of the old world, it 
must be confessed we are struck rather by the extent of 
our ignorance than of our knowledge. For all the light we 
are able to shed, the movements and the passage of the 
various races in this pre-historic time appear to the eye of the 
mind most like the movement of great hosts of men seen 
dimly through a mist. Or shall we say that we are in the 
position of persons living upon some one of many great 
military highways, while before their eyes pass continually 
bodies of troops in doubtful progress to and fro, affording to 
them, where they stand, no indication of the order of battle or 
plan of the campaign 1 Still, to men in such a position there 
would be more or less of intelligence possible in the way in 
which they watched the steps of those who passed before 
them ; and we, too, though we cannot attempt really to follow 
the track of mankind down from the earliest times, may yet 
gather some idea of the changing positions which from a,^e to 
age have been occupied by the larger divisions of our race. 

In the Bible narrative continuous history begins, at the 
earliest, not before the time of Abraham. In the earlier 
chapters of Genesis we find only scattered notices of indivi- 
duals who dwelt in one particular corner of the world, nothing 
to indicate the general distribution of races, or the continuous 
lapse of time. It is, moreover, a fact that, owing partly to 
the associations of childhood, we are apt, by a too literal 
interpretation, to rob the narrative of some part of its historical 



THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD. 69 

value. Here, proper names, which we might be inclined to 
take for the names of single individuals, often stand for whole 
races, and sometimes for the countries which gave their names 
to the people dwelling in them. " Son of," too, must not be 
taken in its most literal meaning, but in the wider, and in 
old languages the perfectly natural, sense of " descended 
from." When nations kept the idea of a common ancestor 
before their minds, in a way to which we of the present day 
are quite unfamiliar, it was very customary to describe any one 
person of that people as the " son of " the common ancestor. 
Thus a Greek who wished to bring before his hearers the 
common nationality of the Greek people — the Hellenes — would 
speak of them as being the sons of Hellen, of the ^Eolians 
or Ionians as sons of .^Eolus or Ion. In another way, again, 
an Athenian or Theban might speak of his countrymen as 
sons of Athens or of Thebes. Such language among any 
ancient people is not poetical or hyperbolical language, but 
the usual speech of every day. So it is with the Bible 
narrative, the earlier events are passed rapidly over. And 
if the remains of the stone ages lift a little the veil which 
hides man's earliest doings upon earth, it must be confessed 
that the light which these can shed is but slight and partial. 
We catch sight of a portion of the human race making their 
rude implements of stone and bone, living in caves as hunters 
and fishers, without domestic animals and without agriculture, 
but not without faculties which raise them far above the level 
of the beasts by which they are surrounded. Yet of these 
early men we may say we know not whence they come or 
whither they go. We cannot tell whether the picture which 
we are able to form of man of the earliest time — of the 
first stone age — is a general or a partial picture ; whether it 
represents the majority of his fellow-creatures, or only 
a particular race strayed from the first home of man. 

We must therefore content ourselves to resign the hope of 
anything like a review of man's life since the beginning. 
Before we see him clearly, he had probably spread far and 
wide over the earth, and already separated into the four most 
important divisions of the race. In the present day, man 
may be divided into four or five main divisions. The black, 
white, red, and yellow races of mankind are so named from 
the colours of their skins, but have each many other pecu- 
liarities of form and feature. The black race may again be 



?0 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

divided into the negroes of Africa and those of Australia, for 
these are of quite separate types. These last, the two black 
races, are the least interesting people to be found over the 
face of the globe, for there is nothing to show that from the very 
earliest ages to which we can reascend they were not living just 
the same savage lives they are living now. Therefore, as 
they seem to have gone through no changes, and have never, 
until quite recent days, come into contact with historical 
peoples, they do not fall within the limit of our inquiry. For 
similar reasons we may dismiss the red race which peoples 
the whole continent of America, saving the extreme north. 
Not that these have never changed or attained to any sort of 
civilization, for we do find the traces of a certain primitive 
culture among them, but because we have no means of con- 
necting this civilization with the history of that part of the 
world which has had a history. 

We are therefore left to deal with the two remaining 
classes, the yellow and the white. The oldest, that is to 
say apparently the least changed, of these is the yellow 
race, and perhaps their most typical representatives are the 
Chinese. The type is a sufficiently familiar one. " The skull 
of the yellow race is rounded in form. The oval of the 
head is larger than with Europeans. The cheek-bones are 
very projecting ; the cheeks rise toward the temples, so that 
the outer corners of the eyes are elevated ; the eyelids 
seem half closed. The forehead is flat above the eyes. The 
bridge of the nose is flat, the chin short, the ears dispro- 
portionately large and projecting from the head. The 
colour of the skin is generally yellow, and in some branches 
turns to brown. There is little hair on the body ; beard is 
rare. The hair of the head is coarse, and, like the eyes, 
almost always black." 1 In the present day the different 
families of the globe have gone through the changes which 
time and variety of climate slowly bring about in all ; and 
the yellow race have not escaped these influences. While 
some of its members have, by a mixture with white races or 
by gradual improvement, reached a type not easily distin- 
guishable from the European, others have, by the effect of 
climate, approached more nearly to the characteristics of the 
black family. We may, however, still class these divergent 
types under the head of the yellow race which we consequently 
1 Lenormant, Manual of the Ancient History of the East, vol. i. p. 55. 



THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD. 71 

find extending over a vast portion of our globe. Round the 
North Pole the Esquimaux, the Lapps, and the Finns form a 
belt of people belonging to this division of mankind. Over 
all Northern and Central Asia the various tribes of Mongolian 
or Turanian race inhabiting the plains of Siberia and of 
Tartary, the Thibetans, the Chinese, Siamese, and other 
kindred peoples of Eastern Asia, are members of this yellow 
family. Erom the Malay peninsula the same race has spread 
southward, passing from land to land over the countless isles 
which cover the South Pacific, until they have reached the 
islands which lie around the Australian continent. A wide 
tract of land, stretching from Greenland in a curved line, 
through North America and China, downwards to the southern 
portion of Van Diemen's Land or New Zealand, and again 
westward from China through Tartary or Siberia, up to 
Lapland in the north of Europe. 

From the results of the previous chapter we see that to 
the yellow race must be attributed all those peoples of Europe 
and Asia which speak either monosyllabic or agglutinative 
languages, and therefore that for the white race are left the 
inflected tongues. These, it will be remembered, we divided 
into two great families, the Semitic and the Aryan or 
Japhetic. We thus see that from the earliest times to which 
we are able to point we have living in Europe and Asia 
these three divisions of the human family, whom we may look 
upon as the descendants of Ham, Shem, and Japhet. What 
relationship the other excluded races of mankind, the black 
and red, bear to the Hamites, Shemites, and Japhetites, is 
a question as yet too undecided for discussion here. Beyond 
the pure Shemites, that is in the north of Africa and on the 
shores of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, lived in earliest 
ages a race whom it is difficult to classify under any of these 
heads. They may have been formed by an admixture of 
Shemites with the real negroes, or from a like admixture with 
the Turanian races. A partially Turanian origin we may be 
pretty sure they had. These people are called in the Bible 
Cushites, and formed the stock from which the Egyptian 
and Chaldsean nations were mainly formed. 

But though from the earliest times there were probably 
in Asia these three divisions of mankind, their relative 
position and importance was very different from what it 
is now. Every year the Turanian races are shrinking 



i * THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

and dwindling before the descendants of Japhet. At the 
moment at which I write it is the Aryan Slaves who are 
endeavouring to push the Mongolian Turks from their 
last foothold in Europe; 1 and great as is the space 
which the Turanian people now occupy over the face of 
the globe, there is reason to believe that in early pre- 
historic times they were still more widely extended. In 
all probability the men of the polished- stone age in Europe and 
Asia were of this yellow-skinned Mongolian type. We know 
that the human remains of this period seem to have come 
from a round-skulled people ; and this roundness of the skull 
is one of the chief marks of the Mongolians as distinguished 
from the white races of mankind. We know too that the 
earliest inhabitants of India belonged to & Turanian, and 
therefore to a yellow, race ; and that Turanians mingled with 
one of the oldest historical Semitic peoples, and helped to 
produce the civilization of the Chaldteans. ' And as, more- 
over, we find in various parts of Asia traces of a civilization 
similar to that of Europe during the latter part of the 
polished-stone age, it seems not unreasonable, in casting our 
eye back upon the remotest antiquity on which research 
sheds any light, to suppose an early widespread Turanian 
or Mongolian family extending over the greater part of 
Europe and Asia. These Turanians were in various stages 
of civilization or barbarism, from the rude condition of the 
hunters and fishers of the Danish shell-mounds to a higher 
state reigning in Central and Southern Asia, and similar 
to that which was afterwards attained towards the end 
of the polished-stone age in Europe. The earliest home 
of these pure Turanians was probably a region lying some- 
where to the east of Lake Aral. " There," says a writer from 
whom we have already quoted, " from very remote antiquity 
they had possessed a peculiar civilization, characterized by 
gross Sabeism, peculiarly materialistic tendencies, and com- 
plete want of moral elevation ; but at the same time, by an 
extraordinary development in some branches of knowledge, 
great progress in material culture in some respects, while in 

1 Not that this particular foothold has descended to- the Turks from 
early times. In the few centuries after Mohammedism was introduced 
among them, the Turanians of Central Asia rose into great power, over- 
turned the Arab Chalifare, and invaded India, Persia, and Europe. From 
this period dates the power of the Turks or Osmanlees. 



THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD. 73 

others they remained in an entirely rudimentary state. This 
strange and incomplete civilization exercised over great part 
of Asia an absolute preponderance, lasting, according to the 
historian Justin, 1500 years." x 

As regards its pre-historic remains, we know that this 
civilization, or half-civilization, was especially distinguished 
by the raising of enormous grave-mounds and altar-stones, 
and it must have been characterized by strong, if not by the 
most elevated, religious ideas, and by a peculiar reverence 
paid to the dead. Now it is by characteristics very similar to 
these that the civilization of Egypt is distinguished, and 
Egypt, of all nations which have possessed a history, is the 
oldest. 

Are we not justified, therefore, in considering this Egyptian 
civilization, which is in some sort the dawn of history in the 
world, as the continuation — the improvement, no doubt, but 
still the continuation — of the half-civilization of the age of 
stone, a culture handed on from the Turanian to the Cushite 
peoples % We may look upon this very primitive form of culture 
as spreading first through Asia, and later on outwards to the 
west. Four thousand and five thousand years before Christ 
are the dates disputed over as those of Menes, the first re- 
corded King of Egypt. And Egypt even at this early time seems 
to have emerged from the age of stone and been possessed, at 
any rate, of bronze. The second date, 4000 B.C., probably 
marks the beginning of the more extended stone-age life of 
Europe. It was therefore with this early culture as it has 
been with subsequent completed civilizations, 

" Nosque ubi primus equis Oriens afflavit anhelis 
Illic sera rubens ascendit lurniua Vesper." 

The Egyptian civilization which (for us) begins with Menes, 
say 4000 B.C., reaches its zenith under the third and fourth 
dynasty, under the builders of the pyramids some eight hundred 
or a thousand years afterwards. Then in its full strength the 
Egyptian life rises out of the past like a giant peak, or like its 
own pyramids out of the sandy plains. It is cold and rigid, like 
a mass of granite, but it is so great that it seems to defy all 
efforts of time. Even when the Egyptians first come before us 

1 Lenormant, Manual, i. 343. It should be remarked that the autho- 
rity of Justiu on such a point is not high. 



74 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

everything seems to point them out as a people already old, 
whether it be their enormous tombs and itemples, their elabo- 
rately ordered social life, or their complicated religious system, 
with its long mysterious ritual. For all this, the Egyptian life 
and thought present two elements of character which may well 
spring from the union of two district nationalities. Its enormous 
tombs and temples and its excessive care for the bodies of the 
dead — for what are the pyramids but exaggerations of the stone- 
age grave-mounds and the temples, but improvements upon the 
megalithic dolmens 1 — recall the era of stone-age culture. The 
evident remains of an early animal worship show a descent 
from a low form of religion, such a religion as we find among 
Turanian or African races. But with them co-existed some 
much grander features. The Egyptians were intellectual in 
the highest degree, — in the highest degree then known to the 
world ; and, unlike the stone-age men, succeeded in other than 
merely mechanical arts. In astronomy they were rivalled 
by but one nation, the Chaldeans ; in painting and sculpture 
they were at the head of the world, and were as nearly the 
inventors of history as of writing itself, — not quite of either, as 
will be seen hereafter. Mixed too with their animal worship 
were some lofty religious conceptions sketching not only beyond 
it — the animal worship — but beyond that " natural " poly- 
theism which was the earliest creed of our own ancestors the 
Aiyans ; and a noble hope and ambition for the future of the 
soul. Were these higher facts due to the influx of Semitic 
blood % It seems likely, when we remember how from the 
same race came a chosen people to whom the world is indebted 
for all that is greatest in religious thought. 

During the fourth and fifth dynasties, or some three or four 
thousand years before Christ, Egypt and the Egyptians do, as 
we have said, rise up distinctly out of the region of mere 
conjecture. Three or four thousand years before Christ — five 
or six thousand years ago : this is no small distance through 
which to look back to the place where the first mountain-peak 
of history appears in view. What was doing in the other 
unseen regions round this mountain 1 Or, in plainer language, 
what was the life of the other peoples of the world at this 
time 1 Perhaps in two places upon the globe and no more 
might then have been found a civilization at all comparable 
with that of Egypt. These places are the Tigro-Euphrates 
valley and China. 



THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD. 75 

The kingdom of the Chalda?ans lay in the lower regions 
of the Tigris and Euphrates, where these rivers approach 
their streams to one another and to the Persian Gulf. The 
land through which the rivers flow is a broad alluvial plain, 
lying like Egypt closely encompassed by sandy desert, so as 
to form the second oasis (Egypt being the first), which breaks 
the monotonous belt of waste land stretching south-west and 
north-east, across the whole of our older hemisphere. It was 
natural that these two fruitful plains — rivalling each other in 
productiveness of soil — should be the earliest hotbeds for 
unfolding the germs of civilization planted by Turanian men. 

It is here, in the Tigro-Euphrates basin, that the Bible 
places the earliest history of the human race. " And it came to 
pass that as they journeyed from the East they found a plain 
in the land of Shinar ; and they dwelt there." — Genesis xi. 2. 
Here too is placed the building of Babel, and the subsequent 
dispersion of the human family. The oldest monuments of 
the country show it inhabited by a mixed people speaking a 
language Semitic in form, but Cushite and also Turanian in 
vocabulary. Here therefore the Turanian element was more 
marked than upon the banks of the Nile. 

The civilization was also later than in Egypt. The earliest 
chronicles upon which we can place reliance begin about 2234 
B.C., with Nimrod "the son of Cush," i.e. of Cushite or Ethio 
pian race. This was not many hundred years before the time 
of Abraham. The cities which he built were, says the Bible, 
Erech and Ur (the present Warka and Mugheir), Accad and 
Calneh, of all which some monumental remains are still left. 
After a while the reigning family of Nimrod gave place — 
whether through conquest or not we do not know — to another, 
still of the same race, coming from Elam, a neighbour 
country including part of the mountainous country north of the 
Tigro-Euphrates basin ; and this country was incorporated with 
older Chaldaea. The accession of strength thus gained to his 
crown induced one of the kings of the Elamitic line, Kudur- 
lagomer (Chedorlaomer) by name, to aspire towards a wider 
empire. He sent his armies against the Semitic nations on his 
west, who were now beginning to settle down in cities, and to 
enjoy their share of the civilization of Egypt and Chaldsea. These 
he subdued, but after sixteen years they rebelled ; and it was 
after a second expedition to punish their recalcitrancy, wherein 
he had conquered the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, and had 



VG THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

among the prisoners taken Lot, the nephew of Abraham, that 
Chedorlaomer was pursued and defeated by the patriarch. 
"And when Abraham heard that his brother was taken 
captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, 
three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan. 
And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by- 
night, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which 
is on the left hand of Damascus. And he brought back all 
the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his 
goods, and the women also, and the people."— Gen. xiv. 

The conquest of a powerful Chaldean king by a handful of 
wandering Semites seems extraordinary, and might have 
sounded a note of warning to the ear of the Chaldaeans. 
Their kingdom was destined soon to be overthrown by another 
Semitic people. After a duration of about half a thousand years 
for the Elamite kingdom, and some seven hundred years since 
the time of Nimrod, the Chakkean dynasty was overthrown and 
succeeded by an Arabian one, that is, by a race of nomadic 
Shemites from the Arabian plains; and after two hundred and 
forty-five years they in their turn succumbed to another more 
powerful people of the same race, the Assyrians. The empire 
thus founded upon the ruins of the old Chaldaean was one of 
the greatest of the ancient world, as we well know from the 
records which meet us in the Bible. Politically it may be said 
to have balanced the power of Egypt. But the stability of this 
monarchy rested upon a basis much less firm than that of 
Egypt; the southern portion — the. old Chakkea— of which 
Babylon was the capital, was always ready for revolt, and 
after about seven hundred years the Babylonians and Medes 
succeeded in overthrowing their former conquerors. All this 
belongs to history — or at least to chronicle — and is therefore 
scarcely a part of our present inquiry. 
_ The Chinese profess to extend their lists of dynasties seven, 
eight, or even ten thousand years backward, but there is 
nothing on which to rest such extravagant pretensions. Their 
earliest known book is believed to date from the twelfth 
century before Christ. It is therefore not probable that they 
possessed the art of writing more than fifteen hundred years 
before our era, and before writing is invented there can be no 
reliable history. The best record of early times then is to be 
found in the popular songs of a country, and of these China 
possessed a considerable number, which were collected into a 



THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD. 77 

book — the Book of Odes — by their sage Confucius. 1 The , 
picture which these odes present is of a society so very 
different from that of the time from which their earliest book 
— the Book of Changes — dates, that we cannot refuse to 
credit it with a high antiquity. From the songs we learn 
that before China coalesced into the monarchy which has 
lasted so many years, its inhabitants lived in a sort of feudal 
state, governed by a number of petty princes and lords. 
The pastoral life which distinguished the surrounding Turanian 
nations had already been exchanged for a settled agricultural 
one, to which houses, and all the civilization which these 
imply, had long been familiar. For the rest, their life seems 
to have been then, as now, a simple, slow-moving one, but not 
devoid of piety and domestic affection. This, then, is the 
third civilization which may have existed in the world when 
the pyramids were being built. It seems to be remote alike 
from the half-civilization of the other Mongolian people of 
the stone age, and from the mixed Turanian- Semitic civi- 
lizations of Egypt and Chaldeea. To these three may we 
add a fourth, and believe in the great antiquity of the highest 
civilization of the red race? The trace of an early civiliza- 
tion in Mexico and Peru, bearing many remarkable points of 
resemblance to the civilization of Chalclgea, is undoubted • but 
there is nothing to show that the identity in some of their 
features extended to an identity in their respective epochs. 

A greater destiny, though a more tardy development, 
awaited the pure Semitic and Japhetic races. Among the 
former we might notice many nations which started into life 
during the thousand years following that date of 3000 B.C., 
which we have taken as our starting-point. Most conspicuous 
among these stand the Phoenicians, who, either in their early 
home upon the sea-coast of Syria, or in their second home, the 
sea itself, or in one of their countless colonies, came into 
contact with almost every one of the great nations of antiquity, 
from the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Israelites, to the 
Greeks and Pomans. But it is upon the life and history of 
the nomadic Shemites, and among them of one chosen people, 
that our thoughts chiefly rest. Among the prouder citied 
nations which inhabited the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, 

1 Ku-foc-tse was his real name. 



78 THE DAWN OF HIST01IY. 

from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea, dwelt a numerous 
people, more or less nomadic in their habits, under the 
patriarchal form of government which belonged to their mode 
of life. Among such a people the chief of one particular 
family or clan was called by God to escape from the influence of 
the idolatrous nations around, and to live that vagrant pastoral 
life which was in such an age most fitted for the needs of 
purity and religious contemplation. It is as something like 
a wandering Bedouin chieftain that we must picture Abraham, 
while we watch him, now joining with some small city king 
against another, now driven by famine to travel with his 
flocks and herds as far as Egypt. Then again he returns, and 
settles in the fertile valley of the Jordan, where Lot leaves 
him, and, seduced by the luxuries of a town life, quits his 
flocks and herds and settles in Sodom, till driven out again by 
the destination of that city. And all through we are not 
now reading dry dynastic lists, but the very life and thought 
of that old time. 1 To us — whose lives are so unsimple — the 
mere picture of this simple nomadic life of early days would 
have an interest and a charm ; but it has a double charm and 
interest viewed by the light of the high destiny to which 
Abraham and his descendants were called. Plying the homely, 
slighted shepherd's trade, these people — for all their glorious 
destiny — lived poor and despised beside the rich monarchies 
of Egypt or Chaldrea ; one more example, if one more were 
needed, how wide apart lie the empires of spiritual and of 
material things. 

Up to very late times the Children of Israel bore many of 
the characteristics of a nomadic people. It was as a nation 
of shepherds that they were excluded from the national life of 
Egypt. For long years after their departure thence they led a 
wandering life, and though when they entered Palestine they 
found cities ready for their occupation — for the nations which 
they dispossessed were for the most part settled people, 
builders of cities — and inhabited them, and, growing corn and 
wine, settled partly into an agricultural life, yet the chief 

1 " Fool ! why journeyest thou wearisomely in thy antiquarian fervour 
to gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay stones of Sacchara ? 
These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the desei t, 
foolishly enough, for the last three thousand years ; but canst thou not 
open thy Hebrew Bible, or even Luther's version thereof?" — Sartor 
Resartus. 



THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD. 79 

wealth of the nation still probably consisted in their flocks, 
and the greater portion of the people still dwelt in tents. 
This was, perhaps, especially the case with the people of the 
north, for even so late as the separation, when the ten tribes 
determined to free themselves from the tyranny of Rehoboam, 
we know how Jeroboam cried out, " To your tents, oh Israel." 
" So Israel departed unto their tents " the narrative continues. 
After the separation we are told that Jeroboam built several 
cities in his own dominions. The history of the Israelites 
generally may be summed up as the constant expression and 
the idtimate triumph of a wish to exchange their simple life 
and theocratic government for one which might place them 
more on a level with their neighbour states. At first it is 
their religion which they wish to change, whether for the 
gorgeous ritual of Egypt or for the vicious creeds of Asiatic 
nations ; and after a while, madly forgetful of the tyrannies 
of a Ramses or a Tiglath-Pileser, they desire a king to reign 
over them in order that they may "take their place " among 
the other Oriental monarchies. Still their first two kings 
have rather the character of military leaders, the monarchy 
not having become hereditary ; the second, the warrior-poet, 
the greatest of Israel's sons, was himself in the beginning no 
more than a simple shepherd. But under his son Solomon the 
monarchical government becomes assured, the country attains 
(like Rome under Augustus) the summit of its splendour and 
power, and then enters upon its career of slow and sad decline. 
Now let us turn to the Japhetic people — the Aryans. It is 
curious that the date of three thousand years before Christ, 
from which we started in our glance over the world, should 
also be considered about that of the separation of the Aryan 
people. Till that time they had continued to live — since 
when we know not — in their early home near the Oxus and 
Jaxartes, and we are able by the help of comparative philology 
to gain some little picture of their life at the time immediately 
preceding the separation. For taking a word out of one 
of the Aryan languages and making allowance for the 
changed form which it would wear in the other tongues, if we 
find the same word with the same meaning reappearing in all 
the languages of the family, we may fairly assume that the 
thing for which it stands was known to the old Aryans before 
the separation. And if again we find a word which runs 
through all the European languages, but is not found in the 



80 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

Sanskrit and Porsian, we guess that in this case the thing 
was known only to the Yavanas, the first separating body of 
younger Aryans, from whom it will be remembered all the 
European branches are descended. Thus we get a very 
interesting list of words, and the means of drawing a picture 
of the life of our primaeval ancestors. The earliest appear- 
ance of the Aryans is as a pastoral people, for words derived 
from the pastoral life have left the deepest traces on their 
language. Daughter, we saw, meant originally " the milker " ; 
the name of money, and of booty, in many Aryan languages is 
derived from that of cattle ; 1 words which have since come to 
mean lord or prince originally meant the guardian of the 
cattle ; 2 and others which have expanded into words for 
district or country, or even for the whole earth, meant at first 
simply the pasturage. So not without reason did we say that 
the king had grown out of the head of the family, and the 
pens of their sheepfolds expanded into walled cities. But 
though a pastoral, they do not seem to have been a nomadic 
race, and in this respect they differed from the Shemites of 
the same period, and from the Turanians, by whom they were 
surrounded. For the Turanian civilization had pretty well 
departed from Asia by that time, and having taught its 
lessons to Egypt and Chaldrea, lived on, if at all, in Europe 
only. There it faded before the advance of the Kelts and 
other Aryan people, who came bringing with them the use of 
bronze weapons and the civilization which belonged to the 
bronze age. The stone age lingered in the lake dwellings of 
Switzerland, as we thought, till about two thousand years 
before Christ, and it may be that this date, which is also 
nearly that of Abraham, represents within a few hundred 
years the entry of the Aryans into Europe. The Greeks are 
generally believed to have appeared in Greece, or at least in 
Asia Minor, about the nineteenth century before our era, and 
they were probably preceded by the Latin branch of the 
Pelasgic family, as well as by the Kelts in the north of 
Europe. So that the period of one thousand years which 
intervened between our starting-point and the call of Abraham, 

1 For example, the Hindee rupee, the Latin pecunia, and owe fee. 

s As the Sanskrit gupa, " a prince," the Slavonic hospodar (from gos- 
pada) contains the word go, our " cow," and means the protector of the 
cattle ; from same root, Sanskrit gavija, " pasturage," Saxon gC, " county," 
Greek gain, or ye, " earth." 



THE NATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD. 81 

the starting-point of the Hebrew history, and which saw the 
growth and change of many great Asiatic monarchies, must 
for the Japhetites be only darkly filled up by the gradual 
separation of the different nations, and their unknown life 
between this separation and the time when they again become 
known to history. 

The general result then of our inquiries into the grouping 
of nations of the world in pre-historic times may be sketched 
in rough outline. At a very early date, say 4000 or 5000 B.c , 
arose an extensive Turanian half-civilization, which, flourishing 
probably in Southern Asia, spread in time to India and China 
upon one side, on the other side to Europe. This was through- 
out, so far as we can tell, a stone age, and was especially 
distinguished by the raising of great tombs and grave-mounds. 
This civilization was communicated to the Egyptians and 
Chaldseans, a mixed people — Semite, Turanian, Ethiopian — 
who were not strangers to the use of metals. As early as 
3000 years before our era the civilization of Egypt had 
attained its full growth, and had probably even then a con- 
siderable past. Chaldsea too and China were both advanced 
out of their primitive state ; possibly so also were Peru and! 
Mexico. But the pure Semite people, the ancestors of the Jews^ 
and the Aryans, were still pastoral races, the one by the banks 
of the Tigris and Euphrates, the other by the banks of the 
Jaxar,tes and the Oxus. The first of these continued pastoral 
and nomadic for hundreds of years, but about this time the 
Western Aryans separated from those of the East, and soon 
after added some use of agriculture to their shepherd; 
life. Then between 3000 and 2000 B.C. came the separation 
of the various peoples of the Western Aryans and their 
migration towards Europe, where they began to appear at the 
latter date. After all the Western Aryans had left the East, 
the older Aryans seem to have lived on for some little time 
together, and at last to have separated into the nations of 
Iranians and Hindus, the first migrating southward, and the 
second crossing the Hindoo-Koosh and descending into the 
plains of the Indus and the Ganges. Thence they drove 
away or exterminated most of the older Turanian inhabitants, 
as their brethren had a short time before done to the Turanians 
whom they found in Europe. Such were the doings of the 
different kindreds and nations and languages of the old world 
in times long before history. 

G 



CHAPTER VI. 

EARLY SOCIAL LIFE. 

We have seen, so far, that the early traces of man's existence 
point to a gradual improvement in the state of his civilization, 
to the acquirement of fresh knowledge, and the practice of 
fresh arts. The rude stone implements of the early drift- 
period are replaced by the more carefully manufactured ones 
of the polished-stone age, and these again are succeeded by 
implements of bronze and of iron. By degrees also the arts 
of domesticating animals and of tilling the land are learnt; and 
by degrees the art of writing is developed from the early 
pictorial rock-sculptures. ISTow, in order that each step in 
this process of civilization should be preserved for the benefit 
of the next generation, and that the people of each period 
should start from the vantage-ground obtained by their pre- 
decessors, there must have been frequent intercommunication 
between the different individuals who lived at the same time ; 
so that the discovery or improvement of each one should be 
made known to others, and become part of the common stock 
of human knowledge. In the very earliest times, then, men 
probably lived collected together in societies of greater or less 
extent. "We know that this is the case now with all savage 
tribes ; and as in many respects the early races of the drift- 
beds seem to have resembled some now existing savage tribes 
in their mode of life, employing, to a certain extent, the same 
implements, and living on the same sort of food, this adds 
to the probability of their gregariousness. The fact, too, 
that the stone implements of the drift-period have generally 
been found collected near together in particular places, indicates 



EARLY SOCIAL LIFE. 83 

these places as the sites of early settlements. Beyond this, 
however, we can say very little of the social state of these 
drift-bed people. No trace of any burial-ground or tomb of 
so great an antiquity has yet been found, and all that we can 
say of them with any certainty is, that their life must have 
been very rude and primitive. Although they were collected 
together in gx*oups, these groups could not have been large, 
and they must have been generally situated at a considerable 
distance from each other, for the only means of support for 
the men of that time was derived from hunting and fishing. 
Now it requires a very large space of land to support a man 
who lives entirely by hunting ; and this must have been more 
particularly the case in those times when the weapons used by 
the huntsman were so rude, that it is difficult for us now 
to understand how he could ever have succeeded in obtaining 
an adequate supply of food by such means. Supposing that 
the same extent of territory were required for the support of 
a man in those times as was required in Australia by the native 
population, the whole of Europe could only have supported 
about 76,000 inhabitants, or about one person to every 4,000 
now in existence. 

The earliest traces of anything like fixed settlements which 
have been found are the " kitchen-middens." The extent of 
some of these clearly shows that they mark the dwelling- 
places of considerable numbers of people collected together. 
But here only the rudest sort of civilization could have existed, 
and the bonds of society must have been as primitive and 
simple as they are among savage tribes at the present time, 
who support existence in much the same way as the shell- 
mound people did. In order that social customs should attain 
any development, the means of existence must be sufficiently 
abundant and easily procurable to permit some time to be 
devoted to the accumulation of superfluities, or of supplies 
not immediately required for use. But the life of the primitive 
hunter and fisher is so precarious and arduous, that he has 
rarely either the opportunity or the will for any other employ- 
ment than the supply of his immediate wants. The very 
uncertainty of that supply seems rather to create recklessness 
than providence, and the successful chase is generally followed 
by a period of idleness and gluttony, till exhaustion of 
supplies once more compels to activity. That the shell-mound 
people were subject to such fluctuations of supply we may 

G 2 



THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

gather from the fact that bones of foxes and other carnivorous 
animals are frequently found in those mounds; and as these 
animals are rarely eaten by human beings, except under the 
pressure of necessity, we may conclude that the shell-mound 
people were driven to support existence by this means, through 
their ill success in fishing and hunting, and their want of 
any accumulation of stores to supply deficiencies. 

The next token of social improvement that is observable 
is in the tumuli or grave-mounds, which may be referred to 
a period somewhat later than that of the shell-mounds. These 
contain indications that the people who constructed them 
possessed some important elements necessary to their social 
progress. They had a certain amount of time to spare after 
providing for their daily wants^and they did not spend that 
time exclusively in idleness. The erection of these mounds 
must have been a work of considerable labour, and they often 
contain highly-finished implements and ornaments, which must 
have been put there for the use of the dead. They are 
evidences that no little honour was sometimes shown to the 
dead ; so that some sort of religion must have existed 
amongst the people who constructed them. The importance 
of this element in early society is evident if we inqune 
further for whom and by whom these mounds were erected. 
Now they are not sufficiently numerous, and are far too 
laborious in their construction, to have been the ordinary 
tombs of the common people. They were probably tombs 
erected for chiefs or captains of tribes to whom the tribes 
were anxious to pay especial honour. We do not know 
at all how these separate tribes or clans came into existence, 
and what bonds united their members together ; but so soon 
as we find a tribe erecting monuments in honour of its chiefs, 
we may conclude that it has attained a certain amount of 
compactness and solidity in its internal relations. Amongst 
an uneducated people there is probably no stronger tie than 
that of a common faith, or a common subject of reverence. 
It is impossible not to believe then that the people who made 
these great, and in some cases elaborately constructed tombs, 
would continue ever after to regard them as in some sort 
consecrated to the great chiefs who were buried under them. 
Eacn tribe would have its own specially sacred tombs, and 
perhaps we may here see a germ of that ancestor-worship 
which may be traced in every variety of religious belief. 



EARLY SOCIAL LIFF. 85 

It has been supposed by some that a certain amount of com- 
merce or barter existed in the later stone age. The reason for 
this opinion is that implements of stone are frequently found 
in localities where the stone of which they are made is not 
native. At Presigny le Grand, in France, there exists a great 
quantity of a particular kind of flint which seems to have been 
very convenient for the manufacture of implements ; for the 
fields there are covered with flint-flakes and chips which have 
been evidently knocked off in the process of chipping out the 
knives, and arrowheads, and hatchets which the stone age 
men were so fond of. Now implements made of this particular 
kind of flint are found in various localities, some of which 
are at a great distance from Presigny ; and it has therefore 
been supposed that Presigny was a sort of manufactory for 
flint weapons which were bartered to neighbouring tribes, and 
by them again perhaps to others further off ; and so these 
weapons gradually got dispersed. But it is also possible that 
the tribes of the interior, who would subsist almost exclusively 
by hunting, and would therefore be of a more wandering 
disposition than those on the sea-coast, may have paid occa- 
sional visits to this flint reservoir for the purpose of supplying 
themselves with weapons of a superior quality, just as the 
American Indians are said to go to the quarry of Coteau des 
Prairies on account of the particular kind of stone which is 
found there. 

In any case, any system of barter which was carried 
on at that time was of a very primitive kind, and not 
of frequent enough occurrence to produce any important 
effects on /the social condition of the people. That that 
condition had already advanced to some extent from its 
original rudeness, shows us that there existed, at all events, 
some capacity for improvement among the tribes which then 
inhabited Europe ; but, when we compare them with modern 
tribes of savages, whose apparent condition is much the same 
as theirs was, and who do not seem to have made any advance 
for a long period, or, so far as we can judge, to be capable of 
making any advance by their own unassisted efforts, we cannot 
but conclude that the stone-age people, if left to themselves, 
would only have emerged out of barbarism by very slow 
degrees. Now we know that, about the time when bronze 
implements first began to be used, some very important 
changes also occurred in the manners and customs of the 



86 THE DAWN OF IIISTOBY. 

inhabitants of Europe. A custom of burning the dead 
supersedes then the older one of burial ; domestic animals of 
vaiious sorts seem to have been introduced, and the bronze 
implements themselves show, both in the elaborateness of their 
workmanship and the variety of their designs, that a great 
change had come over European civilization. The greatness 
and completeness of this change, the fact that there are no 
traces of those intermediate steps which we should naturally 
expect to find in the development of the arts, denote that this 
change was due to some invading population which brought 
with it the arts that had been perfected in its earlier home ; 
and other circumstances point to the East as that earlier home 
from which this wave of civilization advanced. Language has 
taught us that at various times there have been large influxes 
of Aryan populations into Europe. To the first of these 
Aryan invaders probably was due the introduction of bronze 
into Europe, together with the various social changes which 
appear to have accompanied its earliest use. To trace then 
the rise and progress of the social system which the Aryans 
had adopted previous to their appearance in Europe, we must 
go to their old Asiatic home, and see if any of the steps by 
which this system had sprung up, or any indications of its 
nature, may be extracted from the records of antiquity. 

Hitherto scarcely any attempt has been made to discover or 
investigate pre-historic monuments in the East. "We can no 
longer therefore appeal to the records of early tombs or 
temples, to the indications of early seats of population ; but 
though as yet this key to Aryan history has not been made 
available, we have another guide ready to take us by the 
hand, and show us what sort of lives our ancestors used to 
lead in their far-off Eastern home. That guide is the science 
of Language, which can teach us a great deal about this if we 
will listen to its lessons : a rich mine of knowledge which 
has as yet been only partially explored, but one from which 
every day new information is being obtained about the habits 
and customs of the men of pre-historic times. 

All that we know at present of the Aryan race indicates 
that its social organization originated in a group which is 
usually called the Patriarchal Family, the members of which 
were all related to each other either by blood or marriage. 
At the head of the family was the patriarch, the eldest male 
descendant of its founder. The other members, consisting of 



EARLY SOCIAL LIFE. 87 

all the remaining males descended on the father's side from the 
original ancestor, and their wives, and such of the females 
also descended on the father's side from the same ancestor as 
were still unmarried. To show more clearly exactly what 
people were members of a patriarchal family, we will trace 
such a family for a couple of generations from the original 
founder. Suppose then the original founder married, and 
with several children, both sons and daughters. All the sons 
would continue members of this family. The daughters 
would only continue members until they married, when they 
would cease to be members of the family of their birth, and 
become members of their respective husbands' families. So 
when the sons of the founder married, their wives would 
become members of the family ; and such of their children as 
were sons would be members, and such as were daughters 
would be members only until they married ; and so on 
through succeeding generations. On the founder's death he 
would be succeeded as patriarch by his eldest son. On the 
eldest son's death, he would be succeeded by his eldest son, if 
he had a son ; and if not, then by his nest brother. The 
patriarchal family also included in its circle, in later times at 
all events, slaves and other people, who, although perhaps not 
really relations at all, were adopted into the household, 
assumed the family name, and were looked upon for all 
purposes as if its actual members. This little group of 
individuals seems originally to have existed entirely indepen- 
dent of any external authority. It supported itself by its 
own industry, and recognised no other law or authority than 
its own. The only source of authority within this little 
state was the patriarch, who was originally regarded, not only 
as the owner of all the property of which the family was 
possessed, but also as having unlimited power over the 
different individuals of which it was composed. All the 
members lived together, under the same roof, or within the 
same enclosure. No member could say that any single thing 
was his own property. Everything belonged to the family, 
and every member was responsible to the patriarch for his 
actions. 

Although originally the power of the patriarch may have 
been almost absolute over the other members of the family, it 
must very early have become modified and controlled by the 
growth of various customs. Indeed, in trying to picture to 



88 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

ourselves these early times, when as yet no regular notions of 
law had arisen, it is important to remember how great a 
force was possessed by custom. Even now, when we dis- 
tinguish pretty clearly between law and custom, we still feel 
the great coercive and restraining powers of the latter in all 
the affairs of life. But when no exact notions of law had 
been formed, it seemed an almost irresistible argument in 
favour of a particular action that it had always been performed 
before. There would thus spring up in a household certain 
rules of conduct for the different members, certain fixed limits 
to their respective family duties. Before any individual 
would be commanded by the patriarch to do any particular 
duty, it would come to be inquired whether it was customary 
for such a duty to be assigned to such an individual. Before 
the patriarch inflicted any punishment on a member of the 
family, it would come to be inquired whether and in what 
manner it had been customary to punish the pai'ticular act 
complained of. Many things would tend to increase this 
regard for custom. The obvious advantages resulting from 
regularity and certainty in the ordering of the family life 
would soon be felt, and thus a public opinion in favour of 
custom would be created. Ancestor-worship too, which plays 
so conspicuous a part in early Aryan civilization, acted, no 
doubt, as a powerful strengthener of the force of custom, as 
is indicated by the fact that in many nations the traditionary 
originator of their laws is some powerful ancestor to whom 
the nation is accustomed to pay an especial reverence. 

Resulting from this development of custom into law in the 
early family life of the Aryans, we find that special duties 
soon became assigned to persons occupying particular positions. 
To the young men of the household were assigned the more 
active outdoor employments ; to the maidens the milking of 
the cows ; to the elder women other household duties. And 
the importance of knowing what the customs were also gave 
rise to the family council, or " sabha " as it is called in Sanskrit, 
which consisted of the elders of the family, the " sabhocita," 
presided over by the " sabhapati," or president of the assembly. 
The importance attached to the decisions of this council was 
so great, that the " sabya," or decrees of the " sabha," came to 
be used simply to express law or custom. It is probable 
therefore that this assembly regulated to a great extent the 
customs and laws of the family in its internal management, 



EARLY SOCIAL LIFE. S9 

and also superintended any negotiations carried on with other 
families. To complete our picture of the patriarchal family, 
we have the traditions of three distinct customs affecting its 
internal economy. Two of these, the maintenance of the 
sacred house-fire, and the marriage ceremony, probably date 
back to a very remote period ; and the third, the custom of 
adoption, though of later development, may be regarded, in 
its origin at least, as primitive. Fire is itself so wonderful in 
its appearance and effects, so good a servant, so terrible a 
master, that we cannot feel any surprise at its having attracted 
a great deal of attention in early times. The traces of fire- 
worship are so widely spread over the earth that there is 
scarcely a single race whose traditions are entirely devoid of 
them. But the sacred house-fire of the Aryans is interesting 
to us chiefly in its connection with other family customs in 
which it played an important part. This fire, which was 
perpetually kept burning on the family hearth, seems to have 
been regarded, in some sort, as a living family deity, who 
watched over and assisted the particular family to which it 
belonged. It was by its aid that the food of the family was 
cooked, and from it was ignited the sacrifice or the funeral 
pyre. It was the centre of the family life ; the hearth on 
which it burned was in the midst of the dwelling, and no 
stranger was admitted into its presence. When the members 
of the family met together to partake of their meals, a part 
was always first offered to the fire by whose aid they were 
prepared ; the patriarch acted as officiating priest in this as in 
every other family ceremony ; and to the patriarch's wife 
was confided the especial charge of keeping the fire supplied 
with fuel. 

By marriage, as we have seen, a woman became a member 
of her husband's family. She ceased to be any longer a 
member of the household in which she was born, for the family 
life was so isolated that it would have been impossible to 
belong at once to two different families. So we find that the 
marriage ceremony chiefly consisted in an expression of this 
change of family by the wife. In general, however, it was 
preceded by a treaty between the two families, a formal offer 
of marriage made by the intending husband's family on his 
behalf, together with a gift to the bride's family, which was 
regarded as the price paid for the bride. If all preliminary 
matters went forward favourably, then, on the day fixed for 



90 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

the marriage, the different members of the bridegroom's family 
went to the household of the bride and demanded her. After 
some orthodox delay, in which the bride was expected to 
express unwillingness to go, she was formally given up to those 
who demanded her, the patriarch of her household solemnly 
dismissing her from it and giving up all authority over her. 
She was then borne in triumph to the bridegroom's house ; 
and, on entering it, was carried over the threshold, so as not 
to touch it with her feet ; thus expressing that her entry 
within the house was not that of a mere guest or stranger. 
She was then, before the house -fire, solemnly admitted into 
her husband's family, and as a worshipper at the family altar. 
This ceremony was subject to a great many variations 
amongst the different Aryan races ; but in every one of them 
some trace of it is to be found, and always apparently 
intended to express the same idea, the change of the bride's 
family. Adoption, which in later times became extremely 
common among the Romans — the race which seems in Europe 
to have preserved most faithfully the old Aryan family type 
— originated in a sort of extension of the same theory that 
admitted of the wife's entry into her husband's family, as 
almost all the details of the ceremony of adoption are copied 
from that of marriage. Cases must have occurred pretty 
often where a man might be placed in such a position as to be 
without a family. He may have become alienated from his 
own kindred by the commission of some crime, or all his 
relatives may have died from natural causes or been killed in 
war. In the condition in which society was then, such a man 
would be in a peculiarly unenviable position. There would be 
no one in whom he could trust, no one who would be the least 
interested in or bound to protect him. Thus wandering as an 
outlaw, without means of defence from enemies, and unable 
to protect his possessions if he chanced to have any, or to 
obtain means of subsistence if he had none, he would be very 
desirous of becoming a member of some other family, in order 
that he might find in it the assistance and support necessary 
for his own welfare. It might also sometimes happen, that 
owing to a want of male descendants some house might be in 
danger of extinction. Now the extinction of a family was a 
matter of peculiar dread to its members. Connected with the 
worship of the hearth was the worship of the ancestors of the 
family. It was the duty of each patriarch to offer sacrifices 



EAELY SOCIAL LIFE. 91 

on stated occasions to the departed spirits of his ancestors ; 
and it was considered as a matter of the utmost importance 
that these sacrifices should be kept up, in order to insuie the 
happiness of those departed spirits after death. So important 
indeed was this held to be, that it was reckoned as one of the 
chief duties which each patriarch had to perform, and the 
family property was regarded as especially dedicated to this 
object in priority to every other. It would therefore be the 
chief care of each head of a household to leave male descend- 
ants, in order that the offerings for his own and his ancestor's 
benefit might be continued after his death. The only person, 
however, capable of performing these rites was a member of 
the same family, one who joined in the same worship by the 
same household fire : so if all the males of a family were to 
die out, these rights must of necessity cease. 

Now the marriage ceremony had already supplied a precedent 
for introducing members into a house who were not born in it. 
It was very natural, then, that this principle should be extended 
to the introduction of males when there was any danger of the 
male line becoming extinct. This was done by the ceremony 
of adoption, which was in many respects similar to that of 
marriage, being a formal renunciation of the person adopted 
by the patriarch of his original family, in case he was a 
member of one, and a formal acceptance and admission into 
the new family of his adoption, of which he was thenceforward 
regarded as a regular member. This ceremony exhibits in a 
very marked manner the leading peculiarity of the patriarchal 
household. We see how completely isolated, in theory, such 
a group was from the rest of the world ; having its own 
distinct worship, in which no one but its own members were 
permitted to share, reverencing its own ancestors only, who 
might receive worship from none but their descendants. So 
jealously was this separation of families guarded, that it was 
impossible for a man or woman at the same time to worship at 
two family shrines. Though showing this isolation in the 
strongest light, adoption is nevertheless a mark of decay in the 
patriarchal family. It is an artificial grafting on the original 
simple stock ; and however carefully men may have shut their 
eyes at first to its artificial nature, it must have had a gradual 
tendency to undermine the reverence paid to the principle of 
blood relationship. 

Before we consider, however, the causes of decay of this 



92 TIIE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

form of society, which we shall do in the next chapter, there 
are some other indications of their manner of livelihood which 
will help us to understand the social condition of these Aryan 
patriarchal families. We have seen that with the introduction 
of bronze into Europe, certain other changes took place in the 
manner of men's lives. One of these is the domestication of 
animals. It is true that domestic animals were not altogether 
unknown before the bronze age in Europe : but until that 
time this custom had not attained any great extension. In 
remains of settlements whose age is supposed to be before the 
introduction of bronze, by far the larger number of animals' 
bones found are those belonging to wild species, while those 
belonging to tame species are comparatively rare. This shows 
that the principal part of the food of those people who lived 
before the bronze age was obtained by hunting. After the 
introduction of bronze, however, exactly the reverse is the 
case. In these later remains the bones of domestic animals 
become much more common, while those of wild animals are 
comparatively rare, which shows what an important revolution 
had taken place in men's habits. 

It must also be remembered that many remains supposed 
to belong to the later stone age may, in fact, belong to 
societies that existed during the bronze age, but who had 
not yet adopted the use of bronze, or else from their situ- 
ation were unable to obtain any. As yet so little is known 
of how this metal was obtained at that time, that it is 
impossible to say what situations would be least favourable 
for obtaining it ; but considering that tin, of which bronze 
is partly composed, is only found in a very few places, the 
wonder is rather that bronze weapons are found so generally 
amongst the different remains scattered over Europe, than 
that they should be absent from some of them. More- 
over, the races that inhabited Europe before the Aryans came 
there would afterwards remain collected together in settle- 
ments, surrounded by the invading population, for a consider- 
able length of time before they would either be exterminated 
or absorbed by the more civilized race. These aborigines 
would adopt such of the arts and customs of the Aryans as 
were most within their reach. The increased population and 
the greater cultivation of the land which followed the Aryan 
invasion would make it more difficult to obtain food from 
hunting, and the aborigines would therefore be compelled to 



EAELY SOCIAL LIFE. 93 

adopt domestication of animals as a means of support, which 
they would have little difficulty in doing, as they would be 
able to obtain a stock to start from, either by raids on their 
neighbours' herds or, perhaps, by barter. But the manufacture 
of bronze w r eapons, being a much more complicated affair than 
the rearing of cattle, would take a much longer time to ac- 
quire. This perhaps may account for the remains found in the 
lake-dwellings, some of which show a considerable degree of 
social advance, but an entire ignorance of the use of bronze, 
while in the later ones bronze weapons are also found. We 
may then regard the domestication of animals as one of the 
customs introduced into Europe by the Aryans, and as prac- 
tised by them in their Asiatic home. It was on their flocks 
and herds that they chiefly depended for subsistence, and the 
importance of the chase as a means of livelihood was very 
much less with them than it was with the old hunter-tribes 
that formed the earlier population of Europe. This in itself 
was a gi eat advance in civilization. It implied a regular in- 
dustry, and the possession of cattle was not only a guarantee 
against want, but an inducement to a more regular and orderly 
mode of living. 

There are no lessons so important to uncivilized nations as 
those of providence and industry, and the pastoral life 
required and encouraged both these qualities. It was necessary 
to store up at one time of year food to support the cattle 
during another time ; to preserve a sufficient number of 
animals to keep the stock replenished. The cows too had to 
be milked at regular times, and every night the flocks and 
herds had to be collected into pens to protect them from beasts 
of prey, and every morning to be led out again to the pasture. 
All this shows the existence of a more organized and methodical 
life than is possible in a hunter- tribe. The pastoral life, more- 
over, seems to be one particularly suited to the patriarchal 
type of society. Each little community is capable of supplying 
its own wants, and is also compelled to maintain a certain 
degree of isolation. The necessity of having a considerable 
extent of country for their pasturage would prevent different 
families from living very near each other. In its simplest 
state, too, the pastoral life is a nomadic one ; so that the only 
social connection which can exist among such a people is one 
of kinship, for having no fixed homes they can have no settled 
neighbours or fellow-countrymen. The importance attached 



94 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

to cattle in this stage of civilization is evidenced by the 
frequent use of words in their origin relating to cattle, in all 
the Aryan languages, to express many of the ordinary inci- 
dents of life. Not only do cattle occupy a prominent place 
in Aryan mythology, but titles of honour, the names for 
divisions of the day, for the divisions of land, for property, 
for money, and many other words, all attest by their derivation 
how prominent a position cattle occupied with the early 
Aryans. The patriarch is called in Sanskrit " lord of the 
cattle," the morning is " the calling of the cattle," the even- 
ing " the milking time." The Latin word for money, pecunia, 
and our English word " fee " both come from the Aiyan name 
for cattle. In Anglo-Saxon moveable property is called " cwic- 
feoh," or living cattle, while immoveable property, such as 
houses and land, is called " dead cattle." And so we find the 
same word constantly cropping up in all the Aryan languages, 
to remind us that in the pastoral life cattle are the great 
interest and source of wealth of the community, and the 
principal means of exchange employed in such commerce as 
is there carried on. 

The commerce between different tribes or families seems 
to have been conducted at certain meeting-places agreed 
upon, and which were situated in the boundary-land or 
neutral territory between the different settlements. Almost 
habitually at war with each other, or at best only pre- 
serving an armed and watchful quiet, — each side ready at 
a moment's notice to seize on any favourable opportunity for 
the commencement of active hostilities, — regular friendly 
intercourse was impossible. So that when they wished for 
their mutual advantage to enter into amicable relations, it was 
necessary to establish some sort of special agreement for that 
purpose. It is probable, then, that when they found the 
advantages which could be derived from commercial exchanges, 
certain places were agreed upon as neutral territory where 
these exchanges might take place. Such places of exchange 
would naturally be fixed upon as would be equally convenient 
to both parties ; and their mutual jealousy would prevent one 
tribe from permitting the free entrance within its own limits 
of members of other tribes. Places, too, would be chosen so 
as to be within reach of three or four different tribes ; and 
thus the place of exchange, the market-place, would be fixed 
in that border-land to which no tribe laid any special claim. 



EAELY SOCIAL LIFE. 95 

So we see that to commerce was due the first amicable relations 
of one tribe to another, and perhaps our market crosses may- 
owe their origin to some remains of the old ideas connected 
with assemblies where men first learnt to look upon men of 
different tribes as brothers in a common humanity. 

It took a long time, however, to mitigate that feeling of 
hostility which seems to have existed in early times between 
different communities. Even when they condescended to barter 
with each other they did not forget the difference between the 
friend and the foe. In the Senchus Mor, a book compiled by 
the old Irish or " Brehon " lawyers, this difference between 
dealing with a friend and a stranger is rather curiously indi- 
cated in considering the rent of land. " The three rents," 
says the Great Book of the Law, as it is called, "are rack rent 
(or the extreme rent) from a person of a strange tribe, a fair 
rent from one of the tribe (that is one's own tribe), and the 
stipulated rent, which is paid equally by the tribe and the 
strange tribe." This distinction is generally recognised in all 
early communities. In dealing with a man of his own tribe, 
the individual was held bound in honour not to take any unfair 
advantage, to take only such a price, to exact only such a 
value in exchange, as he was legitimately entitled to. It was 
quite otherwise, however, in dealings with members of other 
tribes. Then the highest value possible might justly be ob- 
tained for any article ; so that dealings at markets which 
consisted of exchanges between different tribes, came to 
mean a particular sort of trading, where the highest price 
possible was obtained for anything sold. It is probable that 
this cast, to a certain extent, a slur upon those who habitually 
devoted themselves to this kind of trading. Though it was 
recognised as just to exact as high a price as possible from the 
stranger, still the person who did so was looked upon to a 
certain extent as guilty of a disreputable action ; viewed, in 
fact, much in the same light as usurious moneylenders are 
viewed nowadays. They were people who did not offend 
against the laws of their times, but who sailed so near the 
wind as to be tainted, as it were, with fraud. Indeed, our 
word'" monger," which simply means "dealer," comes from a 
root which, in Sanskrit, means "to deceive;" so commerce 
,and cheating seem to have been early united, and we must 
therefore not be surprised if they are not entirely divorced in 
popular estimation even in our own time. 



96 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

Now "mark," which, as we know, means a boundary or 
border-land, comes from a root which means "the chase," or 
" wild animals." So " mark " originally meant the place of 
the chase, or where wild animals lived. This gives us some 
sort of notion of these early settlements, whose in-dwellers 
carried on their commerce with each other in this primitive 
fashion. They were little spots of cleared or cultivated land, 
surrounded by a sort of jungle or primeval forest inhabited 
only by wild beasts. It was in such wild places as these 
that the first markets used to be held. Here under the 
spreading branches of the trees, at some spot agreed upon be- 
forehand, — some open glade, perhaps, which would be chosen 
because a neighbouring stream afforded means of refreshment, 
— the fierce distrustful men would meet to take a passing 
glimpse at the blessings of peace. These wild border-lands 
which intervene also explain to us how it was that so great an 
isolation continued to be maintained between the different 
settlements. If their pasture-lands had bordered on each 
other immediately, if the herds of one tribe had grazed by the 
herds of another, there must have been much more intercom- 
munion and mutual trust than appears to have existed. 

The value of cattle, however, does not consist only in the 
food and skins which they provide. Oxen have from a very 
early time been employed for purposes of agriculture ; and we 
find among the names derived from cattle many suggesting 
that they must have been put to this use at the time when 
those names arose. Thus the Greeks spoke of the evening as 
" boulutos," or the time for the unyoking of oxen ; and the 
same idea is expressed in the old German word for evening 
" abant " (abend), or the unbinding. This then is the next 
stage in social progress : when agriculture becomes the usual 
employment of man. "With the advance of this stage begins 
the decay of the patriarchal life, which, as we shall see in the 
next chapter, gradually disappears and gives place to fresh 
social combinations. Though we have hitherto spoken only 
of the patriarchal life amongst the Aryans, it Was still more 
characteristic of the Semitic race. They were essentially 
pastoral and nomadic in their habits, and they seem to have 
continued to lead a purely pastoral life much longer than the 
Aryans did. In the Old Testament we learn how Abraham 
and Lot had to separate because their flocks were too extensive 
to feel together ; and how Abraham wandered about with his 



EAELY SOCIAL LIFE. 97 

flocks and herds, his family and servants, dwellers in tents, 
leading a simple patriarchal life, much as the Arabs of the 
present day do. Long after the neighbouring people had 
settled in towns, these Semitic tribes continued to wander 
over the intervening plains, depending for food and clothing 
only on their sheep and cattle and camels. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. 

So long as people continued to lead a wandering shepherd 
life, the institution of the patriarchal family afforded a 
sufficient and satisfactory basis for such cordial union as was 
possible. It was a condition of society in which the relations 
of the different members to each other were extremely simple 
and confined within very narrow boundaries ; but the habits of 
life prevented the existence of any very complicated social 
order, and at the same time gave a peculiar force and endur- 
ance to those customs and ties which did exist. For while 
the different tribes had no settled dwelling-places, the only 
cohesion possible was that produced by the personal relations 
of the different members to each other. Those beyond the 
limits of the tribe or household could have no permanent 
connection with it. They were simply " strangers," friends or 
enemie.3, as circumstances might determine, but having no 
common interests, connected by no abiding link, with those 
who were not members of the same community. When a 
family became so numerous that it was necessary for its 
members to separate, the new family, formed under the 
influence of this pressure, would at first remember the parent 
stock with reverence, and perhaps regard the patriarch of the 
elder branch as entitled to some sort of obedience from, and 
possessing some indefinite kind of power over, it after separa- 
tion. It would however soon wander away and lose all connec- 
tion with its relatives forgetting perhaps in the course of time 
whence it had sprung, or inventiug a pedigree more pleasing to 



THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. 99 

the vanity of its members. But when men began to learn to 
till the soil, by degrees they had to abandon their nomadic life, 
and to have for a time fixed dwelling-places, in order that they 
might guard their crops, and gather, in the time of harvest, 
the fruits of their labour. Cattle were no longer the only 
means of subsistence, nor sufficiency of pasture the only 
limit to migration. A part of their wealth was, for a time, 
bound up in the land which they had tilled and sowed, and to 
obtain that wealth they must remain in the neighbourhood of 
the cultivated soil. Thus a new relationship arose between 
different families. They began to have neighbours ; dwellers 
on and cultivators of the land bordering their own ; so that 
common interests sprang up between those who had hitherto 
had nothing in common, new ties began to connect together 
those who had had formerly no fixed relations. 

The adoption of agriculture changed likewise the relation 
of men to the land on which they dwelt. Hitherto the tracts 
of pasture over which the herdsman had driven his flocks and 
cattle had been as unappropriated as the open sea, as free as 
the air which he breathed. He neither claimed any property 
in the land himself, nor acknowledged any title thereto in 
another. He had spent no labour on it, had done nothing to 
improve its fertility ; and his only right as against others to 
any locality was that of his temporary sojourn there. But 
when agriculture began to require the expenditure of labour 
on the land, and its inclosure, so as to protect the crops which 
had been sown, a new distinct idea of the possession of these 
inclosed pieces of land began to arise, so that a man was no 
longer simply the member of a particular family. He had 
acquired new rights and attributes, for which the patriarchal 
economy had made no provision. He was the inhabitant of a 
particular locality, the owner and cultivator of a particular 
piece of land. The effect of this change was necessarily to 
weaken the household tie which bound men together, by 
introducing new relations between them. The great strength 
of that early bond had consisted in its being the only one 
which the state of society rendered possible ; and its force 
was greatly augmented by the isolation in which the different 
nomadic groups habitually lived. The adoption of a more 
permanent settlement thus tended in two ways to facilitate 
the introduction of a new social organization. By increasing 
the intercourse, and rendering more permanent the connection 

h 2 



100 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

between different families, it destroyed their isolation, and 
therefore weakened the autocratic power of their chief s ; and 
at the same time, by introducing new interests into the life of 
the members of a family, and new relations between different 
families, it required the adoption of regulations sometimes 
necessarily opposed to the principles of patriarchal rule. We 
must remember, however, that the change from a nomadic to a 
settled state took place very gradually, some peoples being 
influenced by it much more slowly than others. Agriculture 
may bo practised to a certain extent by those who lead a more 
or less wandering life, as is the case with the Tartar tribes, 
who grow buckwheat, which only takes two or three months 
for its production ; so that at the end of that time they are 
able to gather their harvest and once more wander in search 
of new pastures. It is probable that the earliest agriculture 
practised was something of this rude description ; and even 
when tribes learnt the advantage of cultivating more slowly- 
germinating crops, they would not readily abandon their 
nomadic habits, which long continuance rendered dear to them ; 
but would only become agriculturists under the pressure of 
circumstances. The hunter tribes of North American Indians, 
and the Gipsies of Europe, serve to show us how deeply rooted 
the love of wandering and the dislike to settled industry 
may become in a people. It was probably to the difficulty of 
supporting existence produced by the increase of population 
that the more continuous pursuit of agriculture was due ; and 
it would therefore be first regularly followed by the less 
warlike tribes, whose territory would be curtailed by the 
incursions of their bolder neighbours. No longer able to seek 
pasture over so extended an area as formerly, and with 
perhaps an increasing population, they would find the neces- 
sity of obtaining from the land a greater proportionate supply 
of subsistence than they had hitherto done. Agriculture 
would therefore have to be pursued more regularly and 
laboriously, and thus the habit of settlement would gradually 
be acquired. Under this influence we may discern a change 
taking place in the social state of the Aryan tribes. Gradually 
they become less nomadic and more agricultural ; and as this 
takes place, there arises also a change in the relations of 
peoples to each other. We should naturally expect considerable 
variety in the effects produced on different nations by the 
adoption of a settled life ; the results varying with the 



THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. ]01 

climate and locality, the sort of cultivation followed, and the 
idiosyncrasies of the people. But though all these elements 
had their influence in determining the sort of organization 
which was adopted, yet one special type is found 
very widely among the Aryans. This form is called the 
Village Community, and it possesses some features apparently 
so peculiarly its own, that it would be difficult to decide on 
the cause of its adoption or growth. It will be safer with our 
present limited knowledge to satisfy ourselves with noting its 
more marked characteristics, and the localities in which it 
may be traced, without attempting to determine whether it 
is to be regarded as a natural resultant of the settlement 
of patriarchal families, or as inherited or evolved by some 
particular group of tribes. 

The village community in its simplest state consisted of a 
group of families, or households, whose dwellings were gene- 
rally collected together within an inclosure. To this group 
belonged a certain tract of land, the cultivation and proprietor- 
ship of which was the subject of minute regulations, varying 
in different localities to a certain extent, but based on the 
division of the land into three principal parts, one of which 
consisted of that immediately in the neighbourhood of the 
dwellings, another of a part specially set aside for agricultural 
purposes, and the remaining third was the surrounding open 
country, which was used only for grazing. Each of these 
divisions was regarded as in some sort the common property 
of the village ; but the rights of individuals in some of them 
were more extensive than in others. That part of the land 
which was annexed especially to the dwellings was more 
completely the property of the different inhabitants than any 
other. Each; head of a house was entitled to the particular 
plot attached to his dwelling, and probably these plots, and 
the dwellings to which they were annexed, remained always 
practically in the ownership of the same family. The area 
of this division, however, was very insignificant when com- 
pared with the rest of the communal estate. The arable 
part was divided into a number of small plots, each or several 
of which were assigned to particular households. The mode of 
division of this part was very various ; but generally speaking, 
either each household had an equal share assigned to it, or else 
a share in proportion to the number of its males. Redistribu- 
tions of the shares took place either at stated periods, or when- 



102 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

ever circumstances had rendered the existing division inequit- 
able. Each household cultivated the particular share assigned 
to it, and appropriated to its own use the crops produced ; but 
individuals were never allowed to adopt for themselves the 
mode of cultivation that they might choose. The crops to be 
sown, and the part of land on which they were to be sown, 
were all regulated by the common assembly of the whole 
village, as were also the times for sowing and for harvest, 
and every other agricultural operation ; and these laws of the 
assembly had to be implicitly followed by all the villagers. 
The open or common land of the village was not divided 
between the households at all ; but every member of the 
community was at liberty to pasture his flocks and herds 
upon it. 

In their relations to each other the villagers seem to have 
been on a footing of perfect equality. It is probable that 
there, existed generally some sort of chief, but his power does 
not appear to have been very great, and for the most part he 
was merely a president of their assemblies, exercising only an 
influence in proportion to his personal qualifications. The real 
lawgivers and rulers of this society are the different individuals 
which compose the assembly. These, however, do not com- 
prise all the inhabitants of the village. Only the heads of 
the different families were properly included in the village 
assembly. But the household has no longer the same extended 
circle as formerly, and, so far as we can gather, there seems to 
have been little check on the division of families and the 
formation of new households. 

It must be borne in mind, however, that we have no 
existing institution exactly resembling the village community, 
as we may suppose it must have originally been. As with 
the patriarchal family, we meet with it only after it has 
undergone considerable modification, and we have to recon- 
struct it from such modified forms and traditions as remain to 
u^. Many minor details of its nature are therefore neces- 
sarily matters of speculation. The community, however, may 
still be found in a changed form in several localities ; notably 
among the peasantry of Russia, and the native population of 
India ; and its former existence among the Teuton tribes is 
attested by evidence of the clearest description. With each 
of these peoples, however, the form is somewhat varied from 
what we may conclude to have been its original nature ; in 



THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. 103 

each country it has been subject not only to the natural 
growth and development which every institution is liable to, 
but to special influences arising from the events connected 
with the nation's history, and from the nature and extent of its 
territory. But before we inquire what these different in- 
fluences may have been, let us notice first certain leading 
characteristics of this group, and consider how they may 
have arisen. 

The first thing that attracts observation is the change in the 
source of authority in this community from that which existed 
in the patriarchal family. The ruling power is no longer placed 
in the hands of an individual chief, but is vested in an 
assembly of all the householders. The second marked pecu- 
liarity is the common possession of the land by the village, 
combined with the individual possession of goods of a move- 
able nature by the different members. These may be said to 
be the two essentials of a true village community. Now the 
change from the patriarchal to this later social form may 
have taken place by either of two processes — the extension of 
an individual family into a community, or the amalgamation 
of various families. Probably both of these processes 
took place ; but wherever anything like the formation 
of a village community has been actually observed, and the 
process has occasionally been discernible even in modern 
times in India, it is due to the former of the two causes 
indicated. This mode of formation also appears to have left 
the most distinct impress on society, and we will therefore 
notice first how it probably acted. 

When a family had devoted itself to agricultural pursuits, 
and settled in a fixed locality, one of those divisions of its 
members might take place which probably were of frequent 
occurrence in the nomadic state. Although theoretically we 
speak of the patriarchal family as united and indivisible, 
yet as a matter of fact we know that such was not 
always the case, and that families must frequently have either 
split up, or else sent off little colonies from their midst. 
Now as we have already pointed out, the settlement of the 
family would have a marked effect in preserving a permanent 
connection between it and its offspring ; so that the separation 
would be by no means so complete as formerly. The sub- 
sidiary family would continue in close intercourse with the 
elder branch, and would enjoy with it the use of the land 



104 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

which had been appropriated. In course of time it might 
happen that a whole group of families would thus become 
settled near each other, all united by a common origin and 
enjoying in common the land surrounding the settlement ; for 
the necessity for mutual protection, which would often arise, 
would alone be a strong inducement to preserve the neigh- 
bourhood of those who from kinship were by nature and tradi- 
tion allies. And although each separate family would continue 
in its internal relations the peculiarities of the patriarchal rule, 
the heads of the different families would be related to each other 
on quite a new principle. They would no longer be members 
of one family all subservient to a common chief, but they 
would still be united by the bond of their common interests. 

There would thus spring up a new relationship between 
the family chiefs, a relationship not provided for in the con- 
struction of the patriarchal family. We might expect 
perhaps that a special pre-eminence would be accorded to 
the original family from which the others had separated, 
and possibly some traces of this pre-eminence may here and 
there be discovered. But, for some reason which has not 
hitherto received any explanation, the general principle of 
equality among the different heads of households prevailed. 
As we do not know exactly by what process families became 
divided, it is useless to speculate how this equality arose. 
Another effect produced by settlement has already been 
indicated ; namely, the decrease of the power of the patriarch 
within his own circle. The family having ceased to be the 
bond of union, though the units composing the new combina- 
tion were themselves groups constructed on the patriarchal 
type, the fact that they were now only parts of larger groups 
had the effect of weakening the force of patriarchal customs. 
When the household was the only state of which an individual 
was a member, to leave it was to lose all share in its rights 
and property. But when the family became part of the 
village, the facilities for separating from it were necessarily 
increased. Households would more readily subdivide, now 
that after separation their component parts continued 
united in the community. Thus by degrees the old patriarchal 
life decayed and gave place to this new and more elastic 
social formation. The importance of an individual's relation 
to the family became less, that of the family to the com- 
munity became greater ; so that by degrees the community 



THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. 105 

absorbed the regulation of many affairs originally within the 
exclusive power of the patriarch. A new lesson has also 
been learnt with regard to property. It is difficult to discern 
whether, in the older group, the property was regarded as 
exclusively that of the chief, or as belonging to the family 
collectively. The truth seems to be that the two ideas were 
blended, and neither was conceived with any completeness. 
In the later group for the first time each form of property 
becomes fully developed ; either kind producing a clearer 
idea of the other by their contrast. The land, the bond of 
union, and the limit of the extent of the community, remained 
the common property of all ; in part, no doubt, because the 
idea of possessing land was still so new that it had not been 
thoroughly grasped. The produce of the land, whether corn 
or pasture, was rather regarded as a proper subject of posses- 
sion ; and though at first in obedience to the habits of their 
former life, this may also have been looked upon as common 
property, it did not long continue so, as the separation of the 
households remained too complete to permit of any community 
with regard to the actual homestead, or of the produce 
required for the support of each household ; and this separa- 
tion of goods by the force of circumstances soon extended to 
cattle and the produce of the harvest. 1 

The effects produced by their new relation to each other on 
the members of this group were very important. Hitherto 
such idea of law as existed was confined to the mandates or 
traditional regulations of the patriarchs. Law too appears at 
first inseparably connected with religion. It was looked upon 
as a series of regulations handed down from some ancestor 
who received them by divine inspiration. This notion of the 
origin of law is so general, that it is to be met with in the 
traditions of almost every nation. Thus we find the Egyptians 
reputing their laws to the teachings of Hermes (Thoth) ; 
while the lawgivers of Greece, Minos and Lycurgus, are 
inspired, the one by Zeus the other by Apollo. So too the 
Iranian lawgiver Zoroaster is taught by the Good Spirit ; and 
Moses receives the commandments on Mount Sinai. Now 

1 Cattle were probably originally communal property : and were ap- 
propriated to individuals at a later stage than other movable goods. 
In the Roman law we find that they could only be transferred by the 
same forms as were required for the conveyance of land : being classed 
amongst the "res mancipi." 



10G THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

though this idea of law is favourable to the procuring obedience 
to it, it produces an injurious effect on the law itself, by render- 
ing it too fixed and unalterable. Law, in order to satisfy the 
requirements and changes of life, should be elastic and capable 
of adaptation ; otherwise, regulations which in their institution 
were beneficial will survive to be obnoxious under an altered 
condition of society. But so long as laws are regarded as divine 
commands they necessarily retain a great degree of rigidity. 
The village community, in disconnecting the source of law from 
the patriarchal power, tended to destroy this association. The 
authority of the patriarch was a part of the religion of the 
early Aryans ; he was at once both the ruler and the priest of 
his family ; and though this union between the two characters 
long continued to have a great influence on the conception of 
law, the first efforts at a distinction between divine and 
human commands sprang from the regulations adopted by the 
assembly of the village. The complete equality and the 
joint authority exercised by its members was an education in 
self-government, which was needed to enable them to advance 
in the path of civilization, teaching them the importance of 
self-dependence and individual responsibility. 

Those who learnt that lesson best displayed in their history 
the greatness of its influence, having gained from it a vigour 
and readiness to meet and adapt themselves to new require- 
ments never possessed by the absolute monarchies which sprang 
from tribes unacquainted with any other principle than that of 
patriarchal government. The history of the various states 
which sprang up in Asia, each in its turn to be overwhelmed 
in a destruction which scarcely left a trace of its social 
influence, exhibits in a very striking manner the defects 
which necessarily ensue when a people ignorant of social 
arts attempts to form an extensive scheme of government. 
The various races raised to temporary power by the chances of 
war in the East, were, generally speaking, nomadic tribes whose 
habits had produced a hardihood which enabled them to 
conquer with ease their effeminate neighbours of the more 
settled districts, but- whose social state was not sufficiently 
advanced to allow them to carry on any extended rule. 
Used only to their simple nomadic life, they were suddenly 
brought face to face with wants and possessions of which they 
had hitherto had no experience, and which lay beyond the 
bounds of their customs or ideas. They contented themselves 



THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. 107 

with exacting from the conquered such tribute as they 
could extort, leaving their new subjects to manage their own 
affairs much as they had done before, till the conquerors, 
gradually corrupted by the luxuries which their position 
afforded, and having failed to make for themselves any firm 
footing in their new empire, were in their turn overwhelmed 
by fresh hordes of nomadic invaders. The mighty empire of 
Rome too fell ; but how different a record has she left behind ! 
Having learnt in her earliest infancy, better perhaps than 
any other nation, how to reconcile the conflicting theories of 
the household and the community, she never nagged in her 
study of the arts of government. Early imbued with a love 
of law and order, her people discovered also how to accommodate 
their rules to the various conditions of those which came 
under their sway. Her laws penetrated to the remotest 
boundaries of her possessions, and the rights of a Roman 
citizen were as clearly defined in Briton as in Rome itself. 
Thus the Romans have left behind them a system of law the 
wonder and admiration of all mankind, and which has 
left indelible marks on the laws and customs, the arts and 
civilization, of every nation which once formed part of their 
dominions. 

Such were among the influences following the adoption of 
the village community ; but such influences only gradually 
asserted themselves, and the extent of their development was 
very various among different peoples. In India, the religious 
element in the household had always a peculiar force, and its 
influence continued to affect to a great extent the formation of 
the community. There this organization never lost sight of 
the patriarchal power, and has exhibited a constant tendency 
to revert to the more primitive social form. Among the 
Slavonic tribes the community seems to have found its most 
favourable conditions, and some of the reasons for this are not 
difficult to discern. The Slaves in Russia have for a long time 
had open to them an immense tract of thinly inhabited 
country, their only rivals to the possession of which were the 
Finnish tribes of the north. Now the village community is a 
form peculiarly adapted for colonization, and this process of 
colonizing fresh country by sending out detachments from 
over-grown villages seems to have gone on for a long time in 
Russia ; so that the communities which still exist there 
present a complete network of relationship to each other ; 



108 THE DAWN OF H1STOKY. 

every village having some " mother- village " from which it 
has sprung. 1 Having thus a practically boundless territory 
for their settlement, none of those difficulties in obtaining 
land which led to the decay of the village in western Europe 
affected the Russians in their earlier history. "With the 
Teutons the village had a somewhat different history. It is 
difficult to determine exactly to what extent it existed among 
them ; but traces of its organization are still discoverable 
among the laws and customs of Germany and England. The 
warlike habits of the German tribes, however, soon produced 
a marked effect on its organization. The chief of the village, 
whether hereditary or elective, was generally possessed of but 
little power. Among a warlike people, however, the necessity 
for a captain or dictator must have been much greater than 
with peaceful tribes ; for war requires, more than any other 
pursuit, that it should be conducted by an individual will. 
Among the peaceful inhabitants of India or Russia the village 
head-man was generally some aged and venerable father 
exercising a sort of paternal influence over the others through 
the reverence paid to his age ajid wisdom. With the Teutons, 
however, their habits gave an excessive importance to the 
strength and vigour of manhood, and they learnt to regard 
those who exhibited the greatest skill in battle as their natural 
chieftains. 



1 The same connection between "mother" and "daughter" villages 
also existed to a large extent in Germany. 



CHAPTER VIIT. 

RELIGION. 

We have hitherto been occupied in tracing the growth of 
inventions which had for their end the supply of material 
wants, or the ordering of conditions which should enable men 
to live peaceably together in companies, and defend the pro- 
ducts of their labour from the attacks of rival tribes and 
neighbours. A very little research into the relics of antiquity, 
however, brings another side of human thought before us, and 
we discover, whether by following the revelations of language 
or by examining into the traces left in ancient sites, abundant 
proof to show that the material wants of life did not alone 
occupy the thoughts of our remote ancestors any more than 
our own, and that even while the struggle for life was fiercest, 
conjectures about the unseen world and the life beyond the 
grave, and aspirations towards the invisible source of life and 
light they felt to be around them, occupied a large space in 
their minds. God did not leave them without witness at any 
time, but caused the " invisible things to be shown by those 
that do appear." And even in the darkest ages and among 
the least favoured races, there were always to be found somo 
minds that vibrated, however feebly, to the suggestions of 
this teaching, and shaped out for themselves and their tribe 
some conception of a Divine Ruler and His government of the 
world from those works of His hands of which their senses 
told them. Before commerce, or writing, or law had advanced 
beyond their earliest beginnings, religious rites and funeral 
rites had no doubt been established in every tribe, and men's 



110 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

thoughts about God and His relationship to His creatures 
had found some verbal expression, some sort of creed in which 
they could be handed down from father to son and form a new 
tie to bind men together. The task of tracing back these 
rites and creeds to their earliest shape is manifestly harder 
than that of tracing material inventions, or laws between man 
and man, to their first germs, for we are here trenching on 
some of the deepest questions which the human mind is 
capable, of contemplating — nothing less indeed than the nature 
of conscience and the dealings of God Himself with the souls 
of His creatures. We must therefore tread cautiously, be 
content to leave a great deal uncertain, and, making up our 
minds only on such points as appear to be decided by revela- 
tion, accept on others the results of present researches as still 
imperfect, and liable to be modified as further light on the 
difficult problems in consideration is obtained. 

The study of language has perhaps done more than anything 
else to clear away the puzzles which mythologies formerly 
presented to students. It has helped in two ways : first, by 
tracing the names of objects of worship to their root-forms, 
and thus showing their meaning and revealing the thought 
which lay at the root of the worship. Secondly, by proving 
the identity between the gods of different nations, whose 
names, apparently different, have been resolved into the same 
root-word, or to a root of the same meaning, when the alchemy 
of philological research was applied to them. 

The discovery of a closer relationship than had been 
formerly suspected between the mythologies of various nations 
is a very important one, as it enables us to trace the growth 
of the stories told of gods and heroes, from what may be called 
the grown-up form in which we first become acquainted with 
them in the religious systems of the Greeks, Romans, and 
Scandinavians, to the primitive shape in which the same creeds 
were held by the more metaphysical and less imaginative 
Eastern people among whom they originally sprang up. In 
some respects this task of tracing back the poetical myths of 
Greek and Northern poets to the simpler, if grander, beliefs 
of the ancient Egyptians and Hindus is not unlike our search 
in a perfected language for its earliest roots. We lose shapeli- 
ness and beauty as we come back, but we find the form that 
explains the birth of the thought, and lets us see how it grew 
in the minds of men. One chief result arrived at by this 



RELIGION. Ill 

comparison of creeds, and by unravelling the meaning of the 
names of ancient gods and heroes, is the discovery that a 
worship of different aspects and forces of nature lies at the 
bottom of all mythologies, and that the cause of the resem- 
blance between the stories told of the gods and heroes (a 
resemblance which strikes us as soon as we read two or three 
of them together) is, that they are in reality only slightly 
different ways of describing natural appearances according to 
the effect produced on different minds, or to the variations of 
climate and season of the year. Having once got the key of 
the enigma in our hands, we soon become expert in hunting 
the parable through all the protean shapes in which it is pre- 
sented to us. The heroes of the old stories we have long loved 
begin to lose their individuality and character for us. And 
instead of thinking of Apollo, and Osiris, and Theseus, and 
Herakles and Thor, as separate idealizations of heroic or 
godlike character: of Ariadne, and Idun, and Isis as 
heroines of pathetic histories, our thoughts as we read are 
busied in tracing all that is said about them to the aspects of 
the sun's march across the heavens, through the vicissitudes 
of a bright and thundery eastern, or a gusty northern, day, 
and the tenderly glowing and fading colours of the western 
sky into which he sinks when his course is run. 

Our first feeling in receiving this simple explanation of the 
puzzling old stories is rather one of disappointment than of 
satisfaction ; we feel that we are losing a great deal — not the 
interest of the stories only, but all those glimpses of deep moral 
meanings, of yearnings after divine teachers and rulers, of 
acknowledgment of the possibility of communion between God 
and man, which we had hitherto found in them, and which we 
are sure that the original makers of them could not have been 
without. It seems to rob the old religions of the essence of 
religion — spirituality — and reduce them to mere observations of ' 
natural phenomena, due rather to the bodily senses than to any 
instincts or necessities of the soul. But here the science of 
language, with which we were about to quarrel as having 
robbed us, comes in to restore to the old beliefs those very 
elements of mystery, awe, and yearning towards the invisible, 
which we were fearing to see vanish away. As is usually the 
case on looking deeper, we shall find that the explanation 
which seemed at first to impoverish, really enhances the 
beauty and worth of the subject brought into clearer light. 



112 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

It teaches us to see something more in what we have been 
used to call mere nature- worship than appears at first sight. 

When we were considering the beginnings of language, we 
learned that all root-words were expressions of sensations 
received from outward things, every name or word being a 
description of some bodily feeling, a gathering-up of impres- 
sions on the senses made by the universe outside us. With 
this stock of words — pictorial words we may call them — it is 
easy to see that when people in early times wanted to express 
a mental feeling, they were driven to use the word which 
expressed the sensation in their bodies most nearly corre- 
sponding to it. We do something of the same kind now when 
we talk of warm love, chill fear, hungry avarice, and dark 
revenge — mixing up words for sensations of the body to 
heighten the expression of emotions of the mind. In using 
these expressions we are conscious of speaking allegorically, 
and we have, over and above our allegorical phrases, words set 
aside especially for describing mental actions, so that we can 
talk of the sensations of our bodies and of our minds without 
any danger of confounding them together. But in early 
times, before words had acquired these varied and enlarged 
meanings, when men had only one word by which to express 
the glow of the body when the sun shone and the glow of the 
mind when a friend was near, the difficulty of speaking, or 
even thinking, of mental and bodily emotions apart from each 
other must have been very great. Only gradually could the 
two things have become disentangled from one another, and 
during all the time while this change was going on an alle- 
gorical way of speaking of mental emotions and of the source 
of mental emotions must have prevailed. It is not difficult to 
see that while love and warmth, fear and cold, had only one 
word to express them, the sun, the source of warmth, and 
God, the source of love, were spoken of in much the same 
terms, and worshipped in songs that expressed the same 
adoration and gratitude. It follows therefore, that while we 
acknowledge the large proportion in which the nature element 
comes into all mythologies, we need not look upon the wor- 
shippers of nature as worshippers of visible things only. They 
felt, without being able to express, the Divine cause which lay 
behind the objects whose grandeur and beauty appealed to 
their wonder, and they loved and woi'shipped the Unseen 
while ^naming the seen only. As time passed on and language 



RELIGION. 113 

developed, losing much of its original significance, there was, 
especially among the Greeks and Romans, a gradual divergence 
between the popular beliefs about the gods and the spirit of 
true worship which originally lay behind them. People no 
longer felt the influence of nature in the double method in which 
it had come to them in the childhood of the race, and thev 
began to distinguish clearly between their bodies and their 
minds, between the things that lay without and the emotions 
stirred within. Then the old nature beliefs became degraded 
to foolish and gross superstitions, and the yearning soul 
sought God in a more internal way. 

The mythologies of the different Aryan nations are those 
which concern us most nearly, entering as they do into the 
very composition of our language, and colouring not only our 
literature and poetry, but our baby-songs and the tales told in 
our nurseries. We shall find it interesting to compare toge- 
ther the various forms of the stories told by nations of the 
Aryan stock, and to trace them back to their earliest shape. 
But before entering on this task it may be well to turn our 
attention for a little while to a still earlier mythology, where 
the mingling of metaphysical conceptions with the worship of 
natural phenomena is perhaps more clearly shown than in any 
other, and which may therefore serve as a guide to help us in 
grasping this connection in the more highly- coloured, pictur- 
esque stories we shall be hereafter attempting to unravel. This 
earliest and least ornamented mythology is that of the an- 
cient Egyptians, a people who were always disposed to retain 
primitive forms unchanged, even when, as was the case 
with their hieroglyphics, they had to use them to express 
more developed thoughts than the forms could well hold. 
That they followed this course with their religious cere- 
monies and in their manner of representing their gods, is 
perhaps fortunate for us, as it enables us to trace with 
greater ease the particular aspect of nature, and the mental 
sensation or moral lesson identified with it, which each one 
of their gods and goddesses embodies. We have the rude 
primitive form embodying an aspect or force of nature, and 
instead of a beautiful confusing story, merely for the most 
part titles, addresses, and prayers, whose purport more or 
less reveals the spiritual meaning which that aspect of natui e 
conveyed to the worshipper. 

The chief objects of nature-worship must obviously be the 



114 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

same, or nearly the same, in every part of the world, so that 
even among different races, living far apart and having no 
connection with each other, a certain similarity in the stories 
told about gods and heroes, and in the names and titles given 
to them, is observable. The sun, the moon, the sky, the sea, 
the river, sunshine and darkness, night and day, summer and 
winter — these objects and changes must always make the 
staple, the back-bone so to speak, round which all mytho- 
logical stories founded on nature-worship are grouped. But 
climate and scenery, especially any striking peculiarity in the 
natural features of a country, have a strong influence in 
modifying the impressions made by these objects on the ima- 
ginations of the dwellers in the land, and so giving a special 
form or colour to the national creed, bringing perhaps some 
divine attribute or some more haunting impression of the 
condition of the soul after death, into a prominence unknown 
elsewhere. The religion of the ancient Egyptians was dis- 
tinguished from that of other nations by several such cha- 
racteristics, and in endeavouring to understand them we 
must first recall what there is distinctive in the climate and 
scenery of Egypt to our minds. 

The land of Egypt is, let us remember, a delta-shaped valley, 
broad at its northern extremity and gradually narrowing 
between two ranges of cliffs till it becomes through a great 
part of its length a mere strip of cultivatable land closely shut 
in on each side. Its sky overhead is always blue, and from 
morning till evening intensely bright, flecked only occa- 
sionally, and here and there, by thin gauzy clouds, so that 
the sun's course, from the first upshooting of his keen arrowy 
rays over the low eastern hills to his last solemn sinking in a 
pomp of glorious colour behind the white cliffs in the west, 
can be traced unimpeded day after day through the entire 
course of the year. Beyond the cliffs which receive the sun's 
first and last greeting, stretches a boundless waste — the silent, 
dead, sunlit desert, which no one had ever traversed, which 
led no one knew where, from whose dread, devouring space 
the sun escaped triumphant each morning, and back into 
which it returned when the valley was left to darkness and 
night. 

The neighbourhood of the desert, and the striking contrast 
between its lifeless wastes and the richly-cultivated plains 
between the hills, had, as we can see, a great effect on the 



RELIGION. 115 

imaginations of the first inhabitants of the land of Egypt, 
and gave to many of their thoughts about death and the world 
beyond the grave an intensity unknown to the dwellers among 
less monotonous scenery. The contrast was a perpetual 
parable to them, or rather perhaps a perpetual memento mori. 
The valley between the cliffs presented a vivid picture of 
active and intense life, every inch of fruitful ground teeming 
with the results of laborer — budding corn, clustering vines, 
groups of palm-trees, busy sowers, and reapers, and builders ; 
resounding, too, everywhere with brisk sounds of toil or 
pleasure. The clink of anvil and hammer, the creaking of 
water-wheels, the bleating and lowing of flocks and herds, 
the tramp of the oxen treading out the corn, the songs of 
women, and the laughter of children playing by the river. 
On the other side of the cliffs, what a change ! There reigned 
an unbroken solitude and an intense silence, such as is only 
found in the desert, because it comes from the utter absence 
of all life, animal or vegetable : no rustle of leaf or bough, 
no hum of an insect, or whirr of a wing, breaks the charmed 
stillness even for a minute. There is silence, broad, unbroken 
sunshine, bare cliffs, rivers of golden sand — nothing else. 
Amenti, the ancient Egyptians called the western desert into 
which, as it seemed to them, the sun went down to sleep 
after his day's work was done ; Amenti, the vast, the grand, 
the unknown, and it was there they built their most splendid 
places of worship, and there they carried their dead for 
burial, feeling that it spoke to them of rest, of unchangeable- 
ness, of eternity. 

Another striking and peculiar feature of Egyptian scenery 
was the beautiful river — the one only river — on which the 
prosperity, the very existence, of the country depended. 
It, too, had a perpetual story to tell, a parable to unfold, 
as it flowed and swelled and contracted in its beneficent 
yearly course. They saw that all growth and life depended 
on its action ; where its waters reached, there followed 
fruitfulness and beauty, and a thousand teeming forms of 
animal, vegetable, and insect life ; where its furthest wave 
stayed, there . the reign of nothingness and death began 
again. The Nile therefore became to the ancient Egyptians 
the token and emblem of a life-giving principle in nature, of 
that perpetual renewal, that passing from one form of existence 
into another, which has ever had so much hopeful significance 

V i 2 



116 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

for all thinking minds. Its blue colour, reflecting the sky, 
was the most sacred of their emblems, and was devoted 
to funeral decorations and to the adornments of the dead, 
because it spoke to them of the victory of life over death, of 
the permanence of the life principle amid the evanescent and 
vanishing forms under which it appeared. Of these two dis- 
tinctive features of nature in Egypt, the unexplored western 
desert and the unending river, we must then think as exercising 
a modifying or intensifying effect on the impressions pro- 
duced on the minds of ancient Egyptians by those aspects of 
nature which they had in common with other Eastern people. 
Let us think what these are. First and most conspicuous we 
must put the sun, in all his changing aspects, rising in gentle 
radiance over the eastern hills, majestically climbing the 
cloudless sky ; sending down fierce perpendicular rays through 
all the hot noon, withdrawing his overwhelming heat towards 
evening as he sloped to his rest, and painting the western sky 
with colour and glory, on which the eyes of men could rest 
without being dazzled, vanishing from sight at last behind 
the white rocks in the west. And then the moon — white, 
cold, changeable, ruling the night and measuring time. 
Besides these, the countless hosts of stars ; the green earth 
constantly pouring forth food for man from its bosom ; the 
glowing blue sky at noon and the purple midnight heaven ;'• 
the moving wind ; the darkness that seemed to eat up and 
swallow the light. 

Now let us see how the ancient Egyptians personified these 
into gods, and what were the corresponding moral or spiritual 
ideas of which each nature-power spake to their souls. We 
shall find the mythology easier to remember and understand 
if we group the personifications round the natural objects whose 
aspects inspired them, instead of enumerating them in their 
proper order as first, second, and third class divinities. So for 
the present we will class them as Sun-Gods, Sky-Gods, Wind- 
Gods, etc. ; and we will begin with the sun, which among the 
ancient Egyptians occupied the first place, given, as you will 
see, to the sky among our Aryan ancestors. The sun indeed 
not only occupies the most conspicuous position in Egyptian 
mythology, but is presented to us in so many characters and 
under so many aspects, that he may be said to be the chief 
inspiration, the central object of worship, nothing else indeed 
coming near to his grandeur and his mystery. It is to be 



RELIGION". 117 

remarked, however — and this is a distinctive feature in the 
Egyptian system of worship — that the mystery of the sun's 
disappearance during the night and his reappearance every 
morning, is the point in the parable of the sun's course to which 
the Egyptians attached the deepest significance, and to the 
personification of which they gave the most dignified place in 
their hierarchy of gods. Atum or Amun, " the concealed one," 
was the name and title given to the sun after he had sunk, as 
they believed, into the under-world ; and by this name they 
worshipped the concealed Creator of all things, the " Dweller 
in Eternity," who was before all, and into whose bosom all 
things, gods and men, would, they thought, return in the 
lapse of ages. The figure under which they represented this 
their oldest and most venerable deity was that of a man, 
sometimes human- headed and sometimes with the man's face 
concealed under the head and horns of a ram — the word ram 
meaning concealment in the Egyptian language. The figure 
was coloured blue, the sacred colour of the Source of Life. 
Two derivations are given for the name Amun. It means that 
which brings to light ; but it also expresses the simple invita- 
tion "Come," and in this sense it appears to be connected 
with a sentence in the ritual, where Atum is represented as 
dwelling alone in the under-world in the ages before creation, 
and on "a day "speaking the word " Come,'' when imme- 
diately Osiris and Horus (light and the physical sun) appeared 
before him in the under-world. 

The aspect of the sun as it approached its mysterious set- 
ting exercised perhaps a still greater power over the thoughts 
of the Egyptians, and was personified by them into a deity, 
which, if not the most venerable, was the best loved of all 
their gods. Osiris was the name given from the earliest times 
to the kind declining sun, who appeared to them to veil his 
glory, and sheathe his dazzling beams in a lovely, many- 
coloured radiance, which soothed and gladdened the weary 
eyes and hearts of men, and enabled them to gaze fearlessly 
and lovingly on the dread orb from which during the day they 
had been obliged to turn their eyes. The god who loved men 
and dwelt among them, and for their sakes permitted himself 
to be for a time quenched and defeated by the darkness — it 
was thus that the ancient people read the parable of the sun's 
evening beauty and of his disappearance beneath the shades 
of night, amplifying it, as the needs of the human heart were 



118 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

more distinctly recognised, into a real foreshadowing of that 
glorious truth towards which the whole human race was 
yearning — the truth of which these shows of nature were 
indeed speaking continually to all who could understand. 
The return of Osiris every evening into the under world in- 
vested him also, for the ancient Egyptians, with the character 
of guardian and judge of souls who were supposed to accom- 
pany him on his mysterious journey, or at all events to be 
received and welcomed by him in Amenti (the realm of souls) 
when they arrived there. Osiris therefore tilled a place both 
among the gods of the living and those of the dead. He was 
the link which connected the lives of the upper and the under 
world together, and made them one — the Lover and Dweller 
among men while yet in the body, and also the Judge and 
Rtder of the spirit realm to which they were all bound. Two 
distinct personifications showed him in these characters. As 
the dweller among men and the sharer of the commonness 
and materiality of their earth life, he was worshipped under 
the form of a bull — the Apis, in which shape his pure soul 
was believed constantly to haunt the earth, passing from one 
bull to that of another on the death of the animal, but never 
abandoning the land of his choice, or depriving his faithful 
worshippers of his visible presence among them. In his 
character of Judge of the Dead, Osiris was represented as a 
mummied figure, of the sacred blue colour, carrying in one 
hand the rod of dominion, and in the other the emblem of 
life, and wearing on his head the double crown of Upper and 
Lower Egypt. In the judgment scenes he is seated on a 
throne at the end of the solemn hall of trial to which the 
soul has been arraigned, and in the centre of which stands 
the fateful balance where, in the presence of the evil accusing 
spirit and of the friendly funeral gods and genii who stand 
around, the heart of the man is weighed against a symbol of 
Divine Truth. 

Next in interest to the setting sun is the personification 
under which the Egyptians worshipped the strong young sun, 
the victorious conqueror of the night, who each morning 
appeared to rise triumphant from the blank realm of darkness, 
in which the rays of yesterday's sun had been quenched. 
They figured him as the eldest son of Osiris, Horus, the 
vigorous bright youth who loved his father, and avenged him, 
piercing with his spear-like ray the monster who had swallowed 



RELIGION. 119 

him up. Horus is represented as sailing up the eastern sky 
from the under-world in a boat, and slaying the serpent 
Night with a spear as he advances. The ultimate victory of 
life over death, of truth and goodness over falsehood and 
wrong, were the moral lessons which this parable of the sun's 
rising read to the ancient Egyptians. The midday sun ruling 
the heavens in unclouded glory, symbolised to them majesty 
and kingly authority, and was worshipped as a great and 
powerful god under the name of Pa, from which name the 
title given to their kings, Phra, was derived. 

Though these four appearances may well seem to exhaust 
all the aspects under which the sun can be considered, there 
are still several other attributes belonging to him which the 
ancient Egyptians noticed and personified into yet other sun- 
gods. These we will enumerate more briefly. Pthath, a god 
of the first order, worshipped with great magnificence at 
Memphis, personified the life-giving power of the sun's beams, 
and in this character was sometimes mixed up with Osiris, and 
in the ritual is spoken of also as the creative principle, the 
"word" or "power" by which the essential deity revealed 
itself in the visible works of creation. Another deity, 
Mandoo, appears to personify the fierce power of the sun's 
rays at midday in summer, and was looked upon as the god 
of vengeance and destruction, a leader in war, answering in 
some measure, though not entirely, to the war-gods of other 
mythologies. There were also Gom, Moui, and Kons, who are 
spoken of always as the sons of the sun god, those who reveal 
him or carry his messages to mankind, and in them the rays, 
as distinguished from the disk of the sun, are no doubt 
personified. The rays of the sun had also a feminine per- 
sonification in Pasht, the goddess with the lioness's head. To 
her several different and almost opposite qualities were attri- 
buted : as indeed, an observer of the burning and enlightening 
rays of an Eastern sun might be doubtful whether to speak 
oftenest of the baleful fever-heat with which they infect the 
blood, or of their vivifying effects upon the germs of animal 
and vegetable life. Thus the lioness goddess was at once 
feared and loved ; dreaded at one moment as the instigator of 
fierce passions and unruly desires, invoked at another as the 
giver of joy, the source of all tender and elevating emotions. 
Her name, Pasht, means the lioness, and was perhaps suggested 
by the fierceness of the sun's rays, answering to the lion's fierce 



120 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

strength or the angry light of his eyes. She was also called 
the "Lady of the Cave," suggesting something of mystery and 
concealment. Her chief worship was at Bubastis; but, judging 
from the frequency of her representations, must have been 
common throughout Egypt. 

We will now take the second great light of the heavens, the 
moon, and consider the forms under which it was personified 
by the Egyptians. Rising and setting like the sun, and dis- 
■appearing for regular periods, the moon was represented by 
a god, who, like the god of the setting sun, occupied a con- 
spicuous position among the powers of the under world, and 
was closely connected with thoughts of the existence of the 
soul after death, and the judgment pronounced on deeds done 
in the body. Thoth, "the Word," the "Lord of Divine 
Words," was the title given to this deity; but though always 
making one in the great assemblage in the judgment-hall, his 
office towards the dead does not approach that of Osiris in 
dignity. He is not the judge, he is the recorder who stands 
before the balance with the dread account in his hand, while 
the trembling soul awaits the final sentence. His character is 
that of a just recorder, a speaker of true words ; he wears the 
ostrich feather, the token of exact rigid evenness and impar- 
tiality, and yet he is represented as having uneven arms, as if 
to hint that the cold white light of justice, untempered by the 
warmth of love, cannot thoroughly apprehend what it seems to 
take exact account of, leaving, after all, one side unembraced, 
unenlightened, as the moonlight casts dense shadows around 
the spots where its beams fall. The silent, watching, peering 
moon ! Who has not at times felt an inkling of the parable 
which the ancient Egyptians told of her cold eye and her 
unwarming rays which enlighten chilly, and point out while 
they distort 1 

In spite of his uneven arms, however, Thoth (the dark moon 
and the light moon) was a great god, bearing sway in both 
worlds in accordance with his double character of the revealed 
and the hidden orb. On earth he is the great teacher, the 
inventor of letters, of arithmetic, and chronology ; the " Lord 
of Words," the "Lover of Truth," the "Great and Great." 
Thoth was sometimes represented under the form of an ape ; 
but most frequently with a human figure ibis-headed ; the 
ibis, on account of his mingled black and white feathers, 
symbolising the dark and the illumined side of the moon. 



RELIGION. 121 

Occasionally, however, he is drawn with a man's face, and 
bearing the crescent moon on his head, surmounted by an 
ostrich feather ; in his hand he holds his tablets and his 
recording pencil. 

The sky divinities were all feminine among the Egyptians ; 
representing the feminine principle of receptivity, the sky 
being regarded by them mainly as the abode, the home of the 
sun and moon gods. The greatest of the sky deities was 
Maut, the mother, who represents the deep violet night sky, 
tenderly brooding over the hot exhausted earth when the day 
was over, and wooing all living things to rest, by stretching 
cool, protecting arms above and around them. The beginning 
of all things, abysmal calm, but above all motherhood, were 
the metaphysical conceptions which the ancient Egyptians 
connected with the aspect of the brooding heavens at midnight, 
and which they worshipped as the oldest primeval goddess, 
Maut. The night sky, however, suggested another thought, 
and gave rise to yet another personification. Night does not 
bring only repose ; animals and children sleep, but men wake 
and think ; and, the strife of day being hushed, have leisure 
to look into their own minds, and listen to the still small 
voice that speaks within. Night was thus the parent of 
thought, the mother of wisdom, and a personification of the 
night sky was worshipped as the goddess of wisdom. She 
was named Neit, a word signifying "I came from myself," 
and she has some attributes in common with the Greek 
goddess of wisdom, Athene, whose warlike character she 
shared. Nu, another sky goddess, who personifies the sunlit 
blue midday sky may also on other accounts claim kinship 
with the patroness of Athens. She is the life-giver — the joy- 
inspirer. Clothed in the sacred colour which the life-giving 
river reflects, the midday sky was supposed to partake of the 
river's vivifying qualities, and its goddess Nu is very frequently 
pictured as seated in the midst of the tree of life, giving of its 
fruits to faithful souls who have completed their time of puri- 
fication and travel in the under world, and are waiting for 
admission to the Land of Aoura, the last stage of preparation 
before they are received into the immediate presence of the 
great gods. 

Two other aspects of the sky were considered worthy of 

\ personification and worship. The morning sky, or perhaps 

the eastern half of the morning sky, which awaited the sun's 



122 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

earliest beams, and which was called Sate, and honoured as 
the goddess of vigilance and endeavour, and the beautiful 
western sky at even, more lovely in Egypt than anywhere 
else, to the exaltation of which the Egyptians applied their 
prettiest titles and symbols. Hathor, the "Queen of Love," 
was the name they gave to their personification of the evening 
sky, speaking of her at once as the loving and loyal wife of 
the sun, who received the weary traveller, the battered con- 
queror, to rest on her bosom after his work was done, and the 
gentle household lady whose influence called men to their 
homes when labour was finished, and collected scattered 
families to enjoy the loveliest spectacle of the day, the sunset, 
in company. Hathor is represented as a figure with horns, 
bearing the sun's disk between them, or sometimes carrying 
a house upon her head. 

The sky, however, with the ancient Egyptians, did not 
include the air; that again was personified in a masculine 
form, and regarded as a very great god, some of whose attri- 
butes appear to trench on those of Osiris, and Pthath ; Kneph 
was the name given to the god who embodied the air, the 
living breath or spirit ; and he was one of the divinities to 
whom a share in the work of creation was attributed. He is 
represented in a boat, moving over the face of the waters, and 
breathing life into the newly-created world. He was no doubt 
connected in the minds of pious Egyptians with thoughts of 
that breath of God by whose inspiration man became a living 
soul ; but in his nature aspect he perhaps personified the wind 
blowing over the Nile valley after the inundation, and seeming 
to bring back life to the world by drying up the water under 
which the new vegetation was hidden. 

The soil of the country thus breathed upon, which responded 
to the rays of Osiris and the breath of Kneph by pouring 
forth a continual supply of food for men, was naturally 
enough personified into a deity who claimed a large share of 
devotion, and was worshipped under many titles. Isis, the 
sister- wife of Osiris, was the name given to her, and so much 
was said of her, and so many stories told, that it appears at 
times as if, under that name, the attributes of all the other 
goddesses were gathered up. Isis, being a personification, not 
of the receptive earth only, but of the feminine principle in 
nature wherever it was perceived, whether in the tender west 
that received the sun, or in the brooding midnight sky that 



RELIGION. L23 

invited to repose, or in the cherishing soil that drew in the 
warmth of the sun, and the breath of the wind, to give them 
forth again changed into flowers, and fruit, and corn. Isis of 
"the ten thousand names " the Greeks called her ; and if we 
consider her as the embodiment of all that can be said of the 
feminine principle, we shall not be surprised at her many- 
names, or at the difficulty of comprehending her nature. She 
was, above all else, however, the wife of Osiris and the mother 
of Horus, which certainly points to her being, or at all events 
to her having been originally, a sky-goddess ; but then again 
she is spoken of as dressed in robes of many hues, which 
points to the changing and parti coloured earth. Some of 
her attributes seem to connect her with the dark moon, 
especially the fact that her most important offices are towards 
the dead in the under world, whose government she is spoken 
of as sharing with her husband Osiris. In pictures of the 
funeral procession she is drawn as standing at the head of the 
mummied body during its passage over the river that bounds 
the under-world, and in that position she represents the 
beginning : her younger sister, Nepthys, the end, stands at 
the foot of the still sleeping soul ; the two goddesses thus 
summing up, with divinity at each end, the little span of 
mortal life. In the judgment hall, Isis stands behind the 
throne of Osiris, drooping great protecting wings over him and 
it. This quality of protecting, of cherishing and defending, 
appears to be the spiritual conception worshipped under the 
form of the many-named goddess. Isis is constantly spoken 
of as the protector of her brother Osiris, and is drawn on the 
tombs with long drooping wings. She is also frequently 
represented as nursing Horus, the son who avenged his father, 
and in that character she wears the cow's head, the cow being 
sacred to Isis, as was the bull to Osiris. 

The origin of the strange intimate connection between 
these Egyptian gods, and certain animals held to be sacred 
to them, and in some case to be incarnated by them, is a 
very difficult question to determine. Two explanations are 
given by different writers, one is that the animal worship 
was a remnant of the religion of an inferior race who inhabited 
Egypt in very far back times, and who were conquered 
but not exterminated by emigrants from Asia, who brought 
a higher civilization and more spiritual religion with them, 
which however did not actually supersede the old, but 



124 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

incorporated some of its baser elements into itself. Other 
writers look upon the animal worship as but another form of 
the unending parable from nature, which, as we have seen, 
pervades the whole of the mythology. The animals, according 
to this view, being not less than the nature gods worshipped, 
as revelations of a divine order, manifesting itself through 
the many appearances of the outside world ; their obedient 
following of the laws imposed on their natures through 
instinct making them better witnesses to the Divine Will than 
self-willed, disobedient man was found to be. 

This is one of the problems which must be left to be 
determined by further researches into unwritten history, or 
perhaps by a fuller understanding of Egyptian symbols. 
That a great deal of symbolical teaching was wrapped up in 
their worship of animals may be gathered by the lesson 
which they drew from the natural history of the sacred 
beetle, whose habit of burying in the sand of the desert 
a ball of clay, full of eggs, which in due course of time 
changed into chrysalises and then into winged beetles, 
furnished them with their favourite emblem of the resurrec- 
tion of the body and the continued life of the soul through 
the apparent death-sleep — an emblem which no temple wanted 
and without which no body was ever buried. Thinking of 
this, we must allow that their eyes were not shut to the 
teaching of the "visible things" which in the ages of darkness 
yet spoke a message from God. 

We have now gone over the most important of the Egyptian 
gods, connecting them with the natural appearances which 
appear to have inspired them, so as to give the clue to a 
comparison with the nature gods of the Aryans, of which we 
shall speak in another paper. There were of course other 
objects of worship, not so easily classed, among which we 
ought to mention Hapi, the personification of the river Nile ; 
Sothis, the dog-star, connected with Isis, and two other of the 
funeral gods ; Anubis, who in his nature aspect may be possibly 
another personification of air and wind, and who is always 
spoken of as the friend and guardian of pure souls, and 
represented at the death-bed sometimes in the shape of a 
human-headed bird as helping the new-born soul to escape 
from the body ; also Thmei, the goddess of Truth and Justice, 
who introduces the soul into the hall of judgment. The evil 
powers recognised among the ancient Egyptians were prin- 



EELIGION. 125 

cipally embodiments of darkness and of the waste of the 
desert, and do not appear to have had distinct conceptions of 
moral evil associated with them. They are, however, spoken 
of in the book of the dead as enemies of the soul, who 
endeavour to delude it and lead it out of its way on its 
journey across the desert to the abode of the gods. Amenti 
was no doubt the desert, but not only the sun-lit . desert the 
Egyptians could overlook from their western hills. ]t included 
the unknown world beyond and underneath, to which they 
supposed the sun to go when he sank below the horizon, and 
where following in his track the shades trooped when they 
had left their bodies. The story of the trials and combats of 
the soul on its journey through Amenti to the judgment-hall, 
and its reception by the gods, is written in the most ancient 
and sacred of Egyptian books, the Ritual, or Book of the 
Dead, which has been translated into French by M. de Ronge, 
and into English by Dr. Birch. The English translation is to 
be found in the Appendix to the fifth volume of Bunsen's 
jEgypt's Place in History. 

The mythologies of the other uninspired Semitic nations 
resemble the Egyptian in the main element of being personifi- 
cations of the powers of nature. The Chaldseans directed their 
worship towards the Heavenly bodies even more exclusively 
than did the ancient Egyptians. Their principal deities were 
arranged in triads of greater and less dignity, and all the 
members of these were personifications of different aspects of 
sun and sky. The first triad comprised Anu, the hidden sun : 
Father of the gods, Lord of Darkness, Ruler of a far-off 
city, Lord of Spirits. By these titles suggestive of some of 
the attributes and offices towards the dead, attributed by the 
Egyptians to Atum and Osiris, was the first member of their 
first order of gods addressed by the Chaldseans. Next in 
order came Bil, the midday sun : the Ruler, the Lord, the 
Source of kingly power, and the patron and image of the 
earthly King. His name has the same signification as Baal, 
and he personifies the same aspect of nature, the sun ruling 
in the heavens, whose worship was so widely diffused among 
all the people with whom the Israelites came in contact. The 
third member of the first triad was Hoa, who personified the 
rays of the sun : Lord of the abyss, Lord of the great deep, 
the intelligent Guide, the intelligent Fish, the Lord of the 
Understanding, are some of his titles, and appear to reveal a 



12G THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

conception somewhat answering to that of Thoth. His symbol 
was a serpent, and he was represented with a fish's head, 
which connects him with the Philistine's god Dagon. The 
second triad comprised Sin or Urki, a moon god, worshipped 
at Ur, Abraham's city, — his second name Urki, means the 
watcher, and has the same root as the Hebrew name for angel 
—San, the disk of the sun, and Vul, the air. Beneath these 
deities in dignity, or rather perhaps in distance, came the five 
planets, each representing some attribute or aspect of the 
deity, or rather being itself a portion of deity endowed with 
a special characteristic, and regarded as likely to be propitious 
to men from being less perfect and less remote than the greater 
gods. These planetary gods were called — ISTebo (Mercury), 
the lover of light ; Ishtar (Venus), the mother of the gods ; 
Nergal (Mars), the great hero ; Bel Merodach (Jupiter), the 
ruler, the judge ; Nin (Saturn), the god of strength. To these 
gods the chief worship of the Assyrians was paid, and it was 
their majesty and strength, typifying that of the earthly king, 
which Assyrian architects personified in the winged man- 
headed bulls and lions with examples of which we are 
familiar. The false gods of the Canaanite nations, Moloch, 
Baal, Chemosh, Baal-Zebub, and Thammuz, were all of them 
personifications of the sun or of the sun's rays, considered 
under one aspect or another ; the cruel gods, to whom human 
sacrifices were offered, representing the strong, fierce summer 
sun, and the gentle Thammuz being typical of the softer 
light of morning and of early spring, which is killed by 
the fierce heat of midday and midsummer, and mourned for 
by the earth till his return in the evening and in autumn. 
Ashtoreth, the horned queen, symbolised by trees and 
worshipped in groves, is the moon and also the evening star, 
but, like Isis, she seems to gather up in herself the worship 
of the feminine principle in nature. The Canaanites repre- 
sented their gods in the temples by symbols instead of by 
sculptured figures. An upright stone, either an aerolite or a 
precious stone (as in the case of the great emerald kept in 
the shrine of the Temple of Baal-Melcarth at Tyre) sym- 
bolised the sun and the masculine element in nature ; while 
the feminine element was figured under the semblance of a 
grove of trees, the Ashara, sometimes apparently a grove 
outside the temple and sometimes a mimic grove kept 
within. 



RELIGION. 127 

There was, however, behind and beyond all these, another, 
and perhaps a more ancient and more metaphysical concep- 
tion of God worshipped by all the Semitic people of Asia. 
His name, II or El, appears to have been for Chaldeans, 
Assyrians, Canaanites, and for the wandering tribes of the 
desert, including the progenitors of the chosen people, the 
generic name for God ; and his worship was limited to a 
distant awful recognition, unprofaned by the rites and sacri- 
fices wherein the nature gods were approached. II became a 
concealed distant deity, too far off for worship, and too great 
to be touched by the concerns of men, among those nations 
with whom the outside aspects of nature grew, to be con- 
cealers, instead of revealers of the Divine ; while to the 
chosen people the name acquired even new significance, as the 
voice of inspiration unfolded the attributes of the Eternal 
Father to His children. 

This slight sketch of the heathen mythology of the Shemites 
will probably strike you as very barren in incident and 
character ; a shadowy hierarchy of gods and heroes indeed, 
through whose thin personalities the shapes of natural objects 
loom with obtrusive clearness. They may serve, however, as 
finger-posts to point the way through the mazes of more 
complex, full-grown myths, and it must also be remembered 
that we have not touched upon the later more ornamented 
stories of the Egyptian gods, such as that of the death and 
dismemberment of Osiris by his enemy Typhon, and the 
recovery of his body, and his return to life through the 
instrumentality of Isis and Horus. 



CHAPTER IX. 



ARYAN RELIGIONS. 



That morning speech of Belarius (in Cymbeline) might serve 
as an illustration of a primitive religion, a nature religion in 
its simplest garb : 

"Stoop, boys ; this gate 
Instructs you how to adore the heavens, and bows you 
To morning's holy office : the gates of monarchs 
Are arched so high, that giants may get through 
And keep their impious turbans on without 
Good-morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven ! 
"We house i' the rock, yet use thee not so hardly 
As prouder livers do." 

Omit only that part which speaks the bitterness of dis- 
appointed hopes which once centred round the doing as 
prouder livers do, and the rest breathes the fresh air of moun- 
tain life, different altogether from our life, now free alike 
from its cares, and temptations, and moral responsibilities. 
He gazes up with an unawful eye into the heavenly depths, 
and fearlessly pays his morning orisons. " Hail, thou fair 
heaven ! " There is no sense here of sin, humility, self-re- 
proach. And in this respect — taking this for the moment as 
the type of ah Aryan religion — how strongly it contrasts with 
the utterances of Hebrew writers. Is this the voice of 
natural as opposed to inspired religion 1 Not altogether, for the 
Semitic mind, was throughout antiquity imbued with a deeper 
sense of awe or fear — awe in the higher religion, fear in the 
lower — than ever belonged to the Aryan character. We see 



AKYAN RELIGIONS. 129 

this difference in the religions of Egypt and Assyria ; and it 
will be remembered that when speaking of the earliest records 
of the Semitic and Aryan races, we took occasion to say that 
it may very well have been to their admixture of Semitic 
blood that the Egyptians stood indebted for the mystic and 
allegorical part of their religious system ; for among all 
the Semitic people, whether in ancient or modern times, we 
may observe a tendency — if no more — towards religious 
thought, and towards thoughts of that mystic character which 
characterised the Egyptian mythology. But the Aryans grew 
up and formed themselves into nations, and developed the 
germs of their religion apart from external influence, and in 
a land which from the earliest times had belonged to them 
alone. Their character, their religion, their national life were 
their own ; and though in after times these went through dis- 
tinctive modifications, when the stems of nations that we 
know, Greeks, Latins, Germans, and the rest, grew out of the 
Aryan stock, they yet bore amid these changes the memory of 
a common ancestry. The laud in which they dwelt was 
favourable to the growth of the imaginative faculties, and to 
that lightness and brightness of nature which afterwards so 
distinguished the many-minded Greeks, X'ather than to the 
slow, brooding character of the Eastern mind. There, down 
a hundred hillsides, and along a hundred valleys, trickled the 
rivulets whose waters were hurrying to swell the streams of 
the Oxus and the Jaxartes. And each hill and valley had its 
separate community, joined indeed by language and custom to 
the common stock, but yet living a separate simple life in its 
own home, which had, one might almost say, its individual 
sun and sky as well as hill and river. No doubt in such a 
land innumerable local legends and beliefs sprang up, and 
these, though lost to us now, had their effects upon the 
changes which among its various branches the mythologies 
of the Aryans underwent ; mythologies which are before all 
remarkable for the endless variations to which the stories of 
their gods are subject, the infinite rainbow-tints into which 
their essential thoughts are broken. 

Despite these divergencies, the Aryans had a common chief 
deity, — the sky, the " fair heaven." This, the most abstracted 
and intangible of natural appearances, at the same time the 
most exalted and unchanging, seemed to them to speak most 
plainly of an all-embracing deity. And though their minds 

K 



I .'ill THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

were open to all the thousand voices of nature, and their 
imaginations equal to the task of giving a personality to each, 
yet none, not even the sun himself, imaged so well their 
ideal of a highest All-Father as did the over-arching heaven. 
The traces of this primitive belief, the Aryan people carried 
with them on their wanderings. This sky-god was the Dyaus 
(the sky) of Indian mythology, the Zeus of the Greeks, the 
Jupiter of the Romans, and the Zio, Tew, or Tyr of the 
( Germans and Norsemen. For all these names are etymolo- 
gically allied. Zeus (gen. Dios) and Dyaus are from the 
same root as are Jupiter (anciently Diupiter) and the com- 
pound form Dyaus-pitar (father Dyaus) ; and Zeo and Tew 
also bear traces of the same origin. Indeed it is by the 
reappearance of this name as the name of a god among so 
many different nations that we argue his having once been the 
god of all the Aryan people. The case is like that of our 
word daughter. As we find this reappearing in the Greek 
thiKjater, and the Sanskrit duhitar, we feel sure that the old 
Aryans had a name for daughter from which all these names 
are derived ; and as we find the Sanskrit name alone has a 
secondary meaning, signifying "the milker," we conclude 
that this was the origin of the word for a daughter. Just so, 
Zeus and Jupiter and Zio and Dyaus show a common name 
for the chief Aryan god ; but the last alone explains the 
meaning of that name, for Dyaus signifies the sky. 

This sky-god then stood to the old Aryans for the notion 
of a supreme and common divinity. Whatever may have 
been the divinities reigning over local streams and woods, 
they acknowledged the idea of one over-ruling Providence 
whom they could only image to their minds as the over- 
spreading sky. This, we may say, was the essential feature 
in their religion, its chief characteristic ; whereas to the 
Semitic nations, the sun, the visible orb, was in every case 
the supreme god. The reason of this contrast does not, it 
seems to me, lie only in the different parts which the sun 
played in the southern and more northern regions : or if it 
arises in the difference of the climate, it not the less forms an 
important chapter in religious development. There are in the 
human mind two diverse tendencies in its dealings with 
religious ideas. Both are to be found in every religion, among 
every people ; one might almost say in every heart. The first 
tendency is an impulse upwards — a desire to press the mind 



ARYAN RELIGIONS. 131 

continually forward in an effort to idealize the deity, but by 
exalting or seeming to exalt Him into the highest regions of 
abstraction, it runs the risk of. robbing Him of all fellowship 
with man, and man of all claims upon His sympathy and 
love. Then comes the other tendency, which oftentimes 
at one stroke brings down the deity as near as possible to the 
level of human beings, and leaves him at the end no more 
than a demigod or exalted man. One may be called the 
metaphysical, the other the mythological tendency : and we 
shall never be able to understand the history of religions 
until we learn to see how these influences interpenetrate and 
work in every system. They show at once that a distinction 
must be drawn between mythology and religion. The 
supreme god will not be he of whom most tales are invented, 
because, as these tales must appeal to human interests and 
relate adventures of the human sort, they will cling more 
naturally round the name of some inferior divinity. The 
very age of mythology — so far as regards the beings to whom 
it relates — is probably rather that of a decaying religion. 

In any case, there will probably be a metaphysical and a 
mythological side to every system. Thus among the Egyptians, 
Amun, the concealed, was the metaphysical god ; but their 
mythology centred round the names of Osiris and Horus. 
And just so with the Aryans, the sky was the original, most 
abstracted, and most metaphysical god ; the sun rose into 
prominence in obedience to the wish of man for a more human 
divinity. And if the Semitic people were more inclined 
toward sun-worship, the Aryans rather toward heaven- 
worship, the difference is consistent with the greater 
faculty for abstract thought which has always belonged to 
our race. 

The two influences are perfectly well marked in Aryan 
mythology. The history of it represents the rivalry between 
the sky-gods and the gods of the sun. It is on account of 
his daily change that the last less fitly becomes the position 
of a supreme god. Born each day in the east, faint and weak 
he battles with the clouds of morning ; radiant and strong he 
mounts into the midday sky, and then, having touched his 
highest point, he turns to quench his beams in the shadowy 
embrace of night. Even the Egyptians and Assyrians, in 
view of these vicissitudes, were driven to invent a sort of 
abstract sun, separated in thought from the mere visible orb. 

K 2 



132 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

This daily course might stand as an allegory of the life of 
man. The luminary who underwent these changing shows, 
however great and godlike in appearance, must have some 
more than common relationship with the world below ; he 
must be either a hero raised among the gods, or, better (for of 
this thought the Aryans too had their dim foreshadowing), he 
is an Avatar, an Incarnation of the Godhead, come down to 
take upon him for a while the painful life of men. This was 
the way the sun gods were regarded by the Indo-European 
nations. Accordingly, while their deepest religious feelings 
belonged to the abstract god Zeus, Jupiter among the Greeks 
and llomans, Dyaus and later on Brahma (a pure abstraction) 
among the Indians, the stories of their mythology belonged 
to the sun-god. He is the Indra of the Hindoos, who wrestles 
with the black serpent, the Night, as Horus did with Typhon ; 
he is the Apollo of the Greeks, likewise the slayer of the 
serpent, the Python ; or else he is Heracles (Hercules), the 
god man — sometimes worshipped as a god, sometimes as a 
demi-god only — the great and mighty hero, the performer of 
innumerable labours for his fellows ; or he is Thorr, the 
Hercules of the Norsemen, the enemy of the giants and of the 
great earth-serpent, which represent the dark chaotic forces 
of nature ; or the mild Baldur, the fairest of all the gods, 
the best-beloved by gods and men. 

It is clear that a different character of worship will belong 
to each. The sacred grove would be dedicated to the mys- 
terious pervading presence ; the temple would be the natural 
home of the human-featured god ; and this the more 
because men worshipped in forest glade or upon mountain 
top before they dedicated to their gods houses made with 
hands. Dyaus is the old, the primevally old, divinity, the 
"son of time" as the Greeks called him. 1 Whenever, there- 
foi*e, we trace the meeting streams of thought, the cult of the 
sun-god and the cult of the sky, to the latter belongs the 
conservative part of the national creed, his rival is the re- 
forming element. In the Vedic religion of India, Indra, as 
has been said, has vanquished the older deity ; we feel in the 
"Vedas that Dyaus, though often mentioned, no longer occupies 
a commanding place, not however without concessions on both 

1 As Welcker has pointed out (Griecli. Gotterlehre), the title, Son of 
Time, belonged to Zeus before Kronos was invented as a personality to 
be the father of Zeus. 



AEYAN KELIGIONS. 133 

sides. Indra could not have achieved this victory but that 
he partakes of both natures. He is the sky as well as the 
sun, more human than the unmoved watching heavens, he is 
a worker for man, the sender of the rain and the sunshine, 
the tamer of the stormwinds, and the enemy of darkness. 
And if one should examine in detail the different systems of 
the Aryan people he would, I think, have no difficulty in 
tracing throughout them the two influences which have been 
dwelt upon, and in each connecting these two influences with 
their sky- and sun-gods. Whatever theory may be used to 
account for it, the change of thought is noticeable. Man 
seems to awake into the world with the orison of Belarius 
upon his lips ; he is content with the silent unchanging 
abstract god. But as he advances in the burden and heat of the 
day he wishes for a fellow-worker, or at least for some potency 
which w r atches his daily struggles with less of godlike sublime 
indifference. Hence arise his sun-gods, — the gods who toil and 
suffer, and even succumb and die. 

It would be too long a task to try and show these varying 
moods among all the Aryan folk. Among most the traces 
are obscure, for the religions themselves have been almost 
lost. Even in those with which we are best acquainted, as 
for instance, the religions of the Greeks 1 and Norsemen, we 
must not attempt a complete or scientific exposition, but let 
the reader draw from a rough sketch their general character. 
Let us turn first to the Greek. The chief religious influences 
in Hellas came from Zeus and Apollo, and belonged to two 
separate branches of the same race who came together to form 
the Hellenic people. The ancestors of the Greeks had, we 
know, travelled from the Aryan home by a road which took 
them south of the Black Sea, and on to the table-land of 

1 Among the nations of Aryan stock we have but small remains of 
the Celtic and Slavonic mythologies, nor of the primitive Persian 
(Iranian), which was all reformed by Zoroaster. There remains, there- 
fore, the Indian or Vedic, the Greek and the German. The Latin 
mythology, as we know it, is almost all borrowed directly from the 
Greek, It is obviously right, therefore, to call the deities by their 
Greek, and not, as was till recently always done, by their Latin 
names. The Latin gods had no doubt much of the character of their 
Greek brethren ; but it is to the Greek poets that we are really in- 
debted lor what we know about them. In this chapter, for the sake 
of clearness, the Latin name is given after the Greek one in paren- 
thises. 



134 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

Asia Minor. So far a comparison of names and traditions 
shows them advancing in a compact body. Here they 
separated ; and after a stay of some centuries, during which 
a part had time to mingle with the Semitic people of the 
land, they pushed forward, some across the Hellespont and 
round that way by land through Thrace and Thessaly, spread- 
ing as they went down to the extremity of the peninsula ; 
others to the western coast of Asia Minor, and then, when 
through the lapse of years they had learnt their art from the 
Phoenician navigators who frequented all that land, onward 
from island to island, as over stepping stones, across the 
iEgean. 

Penetrating to every pleasant bay or fertile valley by the 
coast, but most of all to those upon the east, the new-comers 
mingled with or drove away the former occupants, whom 
they called Pelasgi, and who were in fact their brethren 
who had first gone round by land to Greece. These, who had 
advanced little in civilization, and still lived their early pas- 
toral life, worshiping their gods in groves or upon hillsides, 
these Pelasgi preserved especially their Aryan god Dyaus, 
whose name had now become Zeus. This is why we hear of 
the Pelasgic Zeus ; and why Zeus' great shrines lay in the 
least disturbed districts of Greece proper, in the west, in the 
sacred groves of Dodona and Elis. 

But the worship of Apollo belonged to the sailors from t^te 
Asiatic coast. He is the patron of the arts, of -all that 
higher civilization which the Greeks had learned in contact 
with older nations, especially of the divine arts of music and 
song. He was worshipped by both divisions of the new Greek 
race, the Dorians and Ionians, whose personality was so great 
that it almost obliterated that of the older dwellers in the 
European peninsula. So too the worship of Apollo spread 
after the Dorians and Ionians throughout the land. But it 
began in the east, as Apollo himself was said to have sprung 
from the island of Delos. 

As before by a comparison of words, so now in mythology 
by a comparison of legends, we form our notion of the remote- 
ness of the time at which these stories were first passed current. 
Not only, for instance, do we see that Indra and Apollo 
resemble each other in character, but we have proof that 
nature -myths — stories really narrating some process of nature 
— -were familiar alike to Greeks and Indians. The Vedas, the 



ARYAN RELIGIONS. L35 

sacred book from which we gather our knowledge of ancient 
Hindoo religion, do not relate their stories of the gods in the 
same way, or with the same clearness and elaboration, as do 
the Greek poets. They are collections of hymns, prayers in 
verse, addressed to their gods themselves, and what they relate 
is told more by reference and implication than directly. But 
even with this difference, we have no difficulty in signalising 
some of the adventures of Indra as almost identical with 
those of the son of Leto. Let one suffice. The pastoral life 
of the Aryans is reflected in their mythology, and thus it is 
that in the Yedas almost all the varied phenomena of nature 
are in their turn compared to cattle. Indra is often spoken 
of as a bull • still more commonly are the clouds the cows of 
Indra, and their milk the rain. More than one of the songs of 
the Rig-Veda allude to a time when the wicked Pa?ds (beings 
of fog or mist 1 ) stole away the cows from the fields of Indra and 
hid them away in a cave. They obscured their footprints by 
tying up their feet or by making them drag bushwood behind 
them. But Indra sent his dog Sarama (the dawn or breath 
of dawn), and she found out where the cattle were hidden. 
But (according to one story) the Pa??is overcame her honesty 
and gave her a cup of milk to drink, so that she came back to 
Indra and denied having seen the cows. But Indra discovered 
the deception, and came with his strong spear and conquered 
the Pa/as, and recovered what had been stolen. 

Now turn to the Greek myth. The story here is cast in a 
different key. 

Te Loves olim nisi reddidisses 
Per dolum amotas, pueruin minaci 
Voce duni terret, viduus pharetra 
Risit Apollo. 

Hermes (Mercury) is here the thief. He steals the cattle of 
Apollo feeding upon mount Pieria, and conceals his theft much 
as the Panis had done. Apollo discovers what has been done, 
and complains to Zeus. But Hermes is a god, and no punish- 
ment befalls him like that which was allotted to the Pa?<is ; he 
charms Apollo by the sound of his lyre, and is forgiven, and 
allowed to retain his booty. Still, all the essentials of the 
story are here ; and the story in either case relates the same 
nature myth. The clouds which in the Indian tale are stolen 

1 A word allied to ouv fen. 



L36 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

by the damp vapours of morning, are in the Greek legend 
filched away by the morning breeze ; for this is the nature of 
Hermes. And that some such power as the wind had been 
known to the Indians as accomplice in the work, is shown by 
the complicity of Sarama in one version of the tale. For 
Sarama likewise means the morning breeze ; and, in fact, 
Sarama and Hermes are derived from the same root, and are 
almost identical in character. Both mean in their general 
nature the wind ; in their special appearances they stand 
now for the morning, now for the evening breeze, or even for 
the morning and evening themselves. 

The next most important deity as regards the whole Greek 
race is Heracles. It is a great mistake to regard him, as our 
mythology books often lead us to do, as a demigod or hero 
only. Originally, and among a portion of the Greek race, he 
was one of the mightiest gods ; but at last, perhaps because 
his adventures became in later tradition rather preposterous 
and undignified, he sank to be a demigod, or immortalized 
man. The story of Heracles' life and labours is a pure but 
most elaborate sun-myth. From his birth, where he strangles 
the serpents in his cradle — the serpents of darkness, like the 
Python which Apollo slew — through his Herculean labours to 
his death, we watch the labours of the sun through the mists 
and clouds of heaven to its ruddy setting ; and these stories 
are so like to others which are told of the northern Heracles, 
Thorr, that we cannot refuse to believe that they were 
known in the main in days before there were either Greek- 
speaking Greeks or Teutons. The closing scene of his life 
speaks the most eloquently of its natural origin. Returning 
home in victory — his last victory — to Trachis, Deianira sends 
to him there the fatal white robe steeped in the blood of 
Nessus. ISTo sooner has he put it on than his death agony 
begins. In the madness of his pain he dashes his companion, 
Lichas, against the rocks ; he tears at the burning robe, and 
with it brings away the flesh from his limbs. Then seeing 
that all is over, he becomes more calm. He gives his last 
commands to his son, Hyllus, and orders his funeral pile to 
be prepared upon mount G3ta, as the sun, after its last fatal 
battle with the clouds of sunset, sinks down calmly into the 
sea. Then as, after it has gone, the sky lights up aglow with 
colour, so does the funeral pyre of Heracles send out its light 
over the ^Egean, from its western shore. 



ARYAN RELIGIONS. 137 

Another deity who was distinctly of Aryan origin was 
Dimeter (Ceres), a name which is, in fact, none other than 
Gemeter, " mother earth. " The association of ideas which, 
opposite to the masculine godhead the sun or sky, placed the 
fruitful all-nourishing earth, is so natural as to find a place 
in almost every system : Ave have seen how they formed a 
part of the Egyptian and Assyrian mythologies. There is 
evidence enough to show that each branch of the Aryan folk 
carried away along with their sky- and sun-worship this earth- 
worship also. Tellus was one of the divinities of the old 
Roman pantheon, though her worship gave place in later 
times to that of Cybele and Ceres : Frigg, the wife of Odin, 
filled the same position among the Teutons. But amorg none 
of the different branches was the great nature- myth which 
always gathers round the earth-goddess, woven into a more 
pathetic story than by the Greeks. The story is that of the 
winter death or sleep of earth, or of all that makes earth 
beautiful and glad. And it was thus the Greeks told that 
world-old legend. Persephone (Proserpine) is the green earth, 
or the green verdure which may be thought the daughter of 
earth and sky. She is, indeed, almost the reduplication of 
Demeter herself ; and in art it is not always easy to distin- 
guish a representation as of one or the other. At spring-time 
she, a maiden, with her maidens, is wandering careless in the 
Elysian fields, plucking the flowers of spring, " crocuses and 
roses and fair violets," 1 when in a moment all is changed. 
Hades, regent of Hell, rises in his black-horsed golden 
chariot ; unheeding her cries, he carries her off to share his 
infernal throne and rule in the kingdoms of the dead. In 
other words, the awful shadow of death falls across the path of 
youth and spring, and Hades appears to proclaim the fateful 
truth that all spring time, all youth and verdure, are alike 
with hoary age candidates for service in his Shadowy 
Kingdom. The sudden contrast between spring flowers and 
maidenhood and death gives a dramatic intensity to the scene 
and represents the quiet course of decay in one tremendous 
moment. 2 To lengthen out the picture and show the slow 
sorrow of earth robbed of its spring and summer, Demeter 
is portrayed wandering from land to land in bootless search 

1 Homer's hymn to Demeter. 

2 See Note. Persephone and Baldur. 



13S THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

of her lost daughter. We know how deep a significance this 
story had in the religious thought of Greece ; how the repre- 
sentation of it composed the chief feature of the Eleusinian 
mysteries, and how these and other mysteries probably 
enshrined the intenser, more hidden feelings of religion, and 
continued to do so when mythology had lost its hold upon the 
popular mind. It is, indeed, a new antique story, patent to 
all and fraught for all with solemnest meaning. So that this 
myth of the death of Proserpine has lived on in a thousand 
forms through all the Aryan systems. 

Besides these gods, the Greeks had some whose origin was, 
in part at least, Semitic. Almost the chief of these was the 
Phoenician moon - goddess Astarte, out of whom grew the 
AphroditO, (Venus) of the Greeks, and in great measure 
Artemis (Diana) and Athene (Minerva) as well. The more 
sensuous the character in which AphroditO appears, the more 
does she show her Asiatic birth ; and this was why the 
Greeks, when regarding her especially as the goddess of love, 
called her Cypris or Cytherrea, after Cyprus and Cythera which 
had been in ancient days stations for the Phoenician traders, 
and where they had first made acquaintance with the Greeks. 
She was the favourite goddess of these mariners, as, indeed, a 
moon-goddess well might be ; and they gave her her most 
corrupt and licentious aspect. For she had not this character 
even amon^ all the Phoenicians ; but oftentimes appears as a 
huntress, more like Artemis, or armed as a goddess of battle, 
like Athene. Doubtless, however, goddesses closely allied to 
Aphrodite or Artemis, divinities of productive nature and 
divinities of the moon, belonged to the other branches of the 
Indo-European family. The idea of these divinities was a 
common property ; the exact being in whom these ideas found 
expression varied with each race. 

If we travel from Hellas and from India to the cold north 
the same characteristic features reappear. In the Teutonic 
religions, as ice knoio them, 1 Odin has taken the place of the 

1 Our knowledge of Teutonic mythology is chiefly gathered from the 
Norsemen, and in fact almost exclusively from Icelandic literature. The 
most valuable source of all is the collection of sacred songs made by one 
Scemund the Wise, an Icelander. The collection is called the Edda of 
Soemund, and was not made earlier than the latter part of the eleventh 
century, nearly a hundred years after the legal establishment of Christianity. 
The songs are, no doubt, of much earlier date. 



ABYAN RELIGIONS. 139 

old Aryan sky-god, Dyaus. This last did, indeed, linger on 
in the Zio or Tyr of these systems ; but he had sunk from the 
position of a chief divinity. The change, however, is not great. 
The god chosen to till his place resembles him as nearly as 
possible in character. Odin or Wuotan, 1 whose name means 
"to move violently," "to rush," was originally a god of the 
wind rather than of the atmosphere of heaven ; but along 
with this more confined part of his character, he bears almost 
all the attributes of the exalted sky-god, the Dyiius or Zeus. 
Only he adds to these some parts peculiar to a god of wind ; 
and we can easily understand how, as these Aryan people 
journeyed northwards, their wind-god grew in magnitude and 
power. 

It was Odin who lashed into fury their stormy seas, and 
kept the impatient vikings (fjord-men) forced prisoners in 
their sheltered bays. He it was who rushed through their 
mountain forests, making the ancient pine- tops bend to him 
as he hurried on ; and men sitting at home over their winter 
tires and listening to his howl told one another how he was 
hastening to some distant battle-field, there to direct the 
issue, and to choose from among the fallen such heroes as 
were worthy to accompany him to Valhalla, the Hall of Bliss. 2 
Long after the worship of Christ had overturned that of the 
jEsir, 3 this, the most familiar and popular aspect of Odin's 
nature, lived on in the thoughts of men. In the Middle Ages 
the wind reappears in the legend of the Phantom Army, a 
strange apparition of two hosts of men seen to join battle in 
mid air. The peasant of the Jura or the Alps could tell how, 
when alone upon the mountain-side, he had beheld the awful 
vision. Sometimes all the details of the fight were visible, but 
as though the combatants were riding in the air ; sometimes 
the sounds of battle only came from the empty space above, till 
at the end a shower of blood gave the fearful witness a proof 
that he was not the dupe of his imagination only. 4 In other 

1 Odhinn is the Norse, Wuotan the German name. 

2 Literally, "The Hall of the Chosen," i.e., the hall of heroes. 

3 iEsir, pi. of As, the general Norse name for a god. 

4 One of the last appearances of such a phantom army is graphically 
described hy Mr. Motley, in his History of the Dutch Republic. The oc- 
casion was a short time before the battle of Mookerhyde, in which the army of 
Prince Louis of Nassau was defeated, and himself slain: — " Early in February' 
five soldiers of the burgher guard at Utrecht, being ontheir midnight watch, 



140 THE DAWN OF HISTORY". 

places, especially, for instance, in the Harz mountains, the 
Phantom Army gave place to the Wild Huntsman — our Heme 
the Hunter. In the Harz and in other places in Germany he 
was called Hackelbarend or Hackelberg ; and the story went 
how he had been chief huntsman to the Duke of Brunswick, 
but for impiety or for some dreadful oath, like that which 
had brought vengeance on the famous Van der Decken, had 
been condemned to hunt for ever through the clouds — for 
ever, that is, until the Day of Judgment. 1 All the year 
through he pursues his way alone, and the peasants hear his 
holloa, mingled with the baying of his two dogs.- But for 
twelve nights — between Christmas and Twelfth night — he 
hunts on the earth ; and if any door is left open during the 
night, and one of the two hounds runs in, he will bring mis- 
fortune upon that house. 

Besides this wilder aspect of his character, Odin appears 
as the heaven-god — all-embracing — the father of gods and men, 
like Zeus. "All father Odin" he is called, and his seat is on 

beheld in the sky above them the representation of a furious battle. The 
sky was extremely dark except directly over their heads, where for a space 
equal in extent to the length of the city, and in breadth to that of an 
ordinary chamber, two armies in battle array were seen advancing upon 
each other. The one moved rapidly up from the north-west, with banners 
waving, spears flashing, trumpets sounding, accompanied by heavy 
artillery and by squadrons of cavalry. The other came slowly forward 
from the south-east, as if from an entrenched camp, to encounter their 
assailants. There was a fierce action for a few moments, the shouts of the 
combatants, the heavy discharge of cannon, the rattle of musketry, the 
tramp of heavy-armed foot soldiers, and the rush of cavalry being distinctly 
heard. The firmament trembled with the shock of the contending hosts, 
and was lurid with the rapid discharges of their artillery. . . . The 
struggle seemed but short. The lances of the south-eastern army seemed 
to snap 'like hempstalks,' while their firm columns all went down to- 
gether in mass beneath the onset of their enemies. The overthrow was 
complete — victors and vanquished had faded ; the clear blue space, sur- 
rounded by black clouds, was empty, when suddenly its whole extent 
where the conflict had so lately raged was streaked with blood, flowing 
athwart the sky in broad crimson streams ; nor was it till the five witnesses 
had fully w-atched and pondered over these portents that the vision entirely 
vanished." — Vol. ii. p. 52b'. 

1 The story of Van der Decken, the Flying Dutchman, is surely (more 
especially since its dramatisation by Wagner) too well known to need 
relation. 

2 It may be as well to say here that every detail of the legend is found 
upon a critical inquiry to be significant. His name Hackelbarend (cloak- 
bearer) connects him with Odin, the wind-god. His two dogs connect him 
with two dogs of Sanskrit mythology, also signifying the wind. 



ARYAN RELIGIONS. II] 

Air throne ; there every day he ascended and looked over Glad- 
home, the home of the gods, and over the homes of men, and 
far out beyond the great earth-girding sea,, to the dim frost- 
bound giant land on earth's border. And whatever he saw of 
wrong-doing and of wickedness upon the earth, that he set to 
rights ; and he kept watch against the coming of the giants 
over seas to invade the abode of man and the citadel of the 
gods. Only these last -the race of giants — he could not 
utterly subdue and exterminate ; for Fate, which was stronger 
than all, had decreed that they should remain until the end, 
and only be overthrown at the Twilight of the Gods them- 
selves — of which we cannot tell more now. 

In this picture of Odin we surely see a fellow-portrait to 
that of the "wide-seeing" Zeus. "The eye of Zeus, which 
sees all things and knows all," says one poet; or again, as 
another says, " Zeus is the earth, Zeus is the sky, Zeus is all, 
and that which is over all." 

Behind Odin stands Tyr — of whom we have already spoken 
■ — and Thorr and Baldur, who are two different embodiments 
of the sun. The former corresponds in character very closely 
with Heracles. He is the mighty champion, the strongest 
and most warlike of all the gods. But he is the friend of 
man and patron of agriculture, 1 and as such the enemy of the 
giant-race, which represents not only cold and darkness, but 
the barren, rugged, uncultivated regions of earth. Like 
Heracles, Thorr is never idle, constantly with some work on 
hand, " faring eastward to fight Trolls (giants)," as the Eddas 
often tell us. In one of these expeditions he performs three 
labours, which may be paralleled from the labours of Heracles. 
He nearly drains the sea dry by drinking from a horn ; this 
is the sun " sucking up the clouds ". from the sea, as people 
still speak of him as doing. It corresponds to the turning 
the course of the Alpheus and Peneus, which Heracles per- 
forms. Then he tries to lift (as he thinks) a large cat from 
the ground, but in reality he has been lifting the great mid- 
earth serpent (notice the fact that we have the sun at war 
with a serpent once more) which encircles the whole earth, 
and he has by his strength shaken the very foundations of 
the world. This is the same as the feat of Heracles in 

1 See UhlanJ, Der Mythus von Thor. 



L4-2 THE DAWN OP HISTORY. 

bringing up Cerberus from the under- world. And lastly, he 
wrestles, as he thinks, with an old woman, and is worsted ; 
but in reality he his been wrestling with Old Age or Death, 
from whom no one ever came off the victor. So we read in 
Homer that Heracles once wounded Hades himself, and 
" brought grief into the land of shades," and in Euripides' 
beautiful play, Alcestis, we see Heracles struggling, but this 
time victoriously, with Thanatos, Death himself. In these 
labours the Norse hero, though striving manfully, fails ; but 
the Greek is always victorious. Herein lies a difference 
belonging to the character of the two creeds. 

Baldur the Beautiful — the fair, mild Baldur — represents 
the sun more truly than Thorr does : the sun in his gentle 
aspect, as he would naturally appear to a Norseman. His 
house is Breidablik, " Wide-glance," that is to say, the bright 
upper air, the sun's home. He is like the son of Let6 seen 
in his benignant aspect, the best beloved among gods, the 
brightener of their war-like life, beloved, too, by all things 
on earth, living and inanimate, and lamented as only the sun 
could be — the chief nourisher at life's feast. For, when 
Baldur died, everything in heaven and earth, " both all living 
things and trees and stones and all metals," wept to bring 
him back again, " as thou hast no doubt seen these things 
weep when they are brought from a cold place into a hot 
one." A modern poet has very happily expressed the character 
of Baldur, the sun-god, the great quickener of life upon earth. 
Baldur is supposed to leave heaven to tread the ways of men, 
and his coming is the signal for the new birth, as of spring- 
time, in the sleeping world. 



" TheTe is some divine trouble 

On earth and in air ; 
Trees tremble, brooks bubble, 

Ants loosen the sod, 
Warm footsteps awaken 

Whatever is fair, 
Sweet dewdrops are shaken 

To quicken each clod. 
The wild rainbows o'er him 

Are melted and fade, 
The light runs before him 

Through meadow and gla le. 



ARYAN RELIGIONS. 



14- 



Green branches close round him, 
Their leaves whisper clear — 

He is ours, we have found him, 
Bright Baldur is here." 1 



The eart h -mother of the Teutons was Frigg, the wife of 
Odin; but perhaps when Frigg' s natural character was forgotten, 
Hertha (Earth) became separated into another personage. 
"Odin and Frigg," says the Edda, "divide the slain ; " and 
this means that the sky-god received the breath, the earth- 
goddess the body. But on the whole she plays an insignificant 
part in our late form of Teuton mythology. Closely related 
to her, as Persephone is related to DemetOr, with a name 
formed out of hers, stands Freyja, the goddess of spring, and 
beauty, and love ; for the northern goddess of love might 
better accord with the innocence of spring than the Phoenician 
Aphrodite. Freyja has a brother Freyr, who but reduplicated 
her name and character, for he too is a god of spring. 
Very beautiful is the myth which reverses the sad story of 
Persephone (and Baldur) and tells of the barren earth wooed 
by the returning spring. Freyr one day mounted the seat of 
Odin which was called air-throne, and whence a god might 
look over all the ways of earth. And looking out into giant 
land far in the north, he saw a light flash forth as the aurora 
lights up the wintry sky. 2 And looking again, he saw that a 
maiden wondrously beautiful had just opened her father's 
door, and that this was her beauty which shone out over the 
snow. Then Freyr left the air-throne and determined to send 
to the fair one and woo her to be his wife. Her name was 
Gerda. 3 Freyr sent his messenger Skirnir to carry his suit to 
Gerda ; and -he told her how great Freyr was among the gods, 
how noble and happy a place was Asgard, the home of the 
gods. For all Skirnir's pleading Gerda would give no ear to 
his suit. But Freyr had given his magic sword (the sun's 
rays) to Skirnir ; and at last the ambassador, tired of pleading, 
drew that and threatened to take the life of Gerda unless she 

1 Baldur ; a Song of Divine Death, by Bobert Buchanan. 

2 This scarcely holds as a simile, for in fact the light is the aurora. It 
need hardly be said, therefore, that the comparison is not found in the 
original story. 

3 Earth, garSr, being a general word for earth, expanded from the con- 
fined one of inclosure (allied to oIkos, hortus). Just as yixia is connected 
with a cow-inclosure. 



144 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

granted Freyr his wish. So she consented to meet him nine 
nights hence in the wood of Barri. The nine nights typify 
the nine winter months of the northern year ; and the name 
of the wood, Barri, means " the green " ; the beginnings of 
spring in the wood being happily imaged as the meeting of the 
fresh and barren earth. 

All the elements of nature were personified by the spirit of 
Aryan poetry, and it would be a hopeless task — wearisome 
and useless to the reader — to give a mere category of the 
nature gods in each system. Those which had most influence 
upon their religious thought were they who have been men- 
tioned, the gods of the sky and sun and mother .earth. The 
other elemental divinities were (as a rule) more strictly bound 
within the circle of their own dominions. It is curious to 
trace the difference between these strictly polytheistic deities — 
coequal in their several spheres — and those others who arose 
in obedience to a wider ideal of a godhead. Thus the Indians 
had a strictly elemental heaven or sky, as well as their god 
Dyaus. Him they called Varu??a, a word which corresponds ety- 
mologically to the Greek Ouranos, the heaven. In the later 
Indian mythology Varu??a came to stand, not for the sky, but 
for the wide expanse of ocean, and so corresponds to the Greek 
Poseidon, the Latin Neptune, and the Norse OEgir. All these 
were the gods of the sea and of all waters. The wind, as we 
saw, combined in the person of Odin with the character of a 
highest god ; but in the Greek the part was played by an 
inferior divinity, Hermes. In India there is no actual wind- 
god ; but the character is divided among a plurality of minor 
divinities, the Maruts. And in revenge a being of the first 
importance in the Indian system receives scarcely any notice 
in the others. This is Agni, the god of fire, who corresponds 
to Hephaestus and Yulcan ; and in the north is not a god at 
all, but an evil being called Loki. This is enough to show 
that the worship of Agni rose into fervour after the separation 
of the Aryan folk. 

We postpone to the next chapter the mention of the gods of 
the under-world. 

The religions of which we have been giving this slight 
sketch have been what we may call " natural" religions, that 
is to say, the thoughts about God and the Unseen world 
which without help of any special vision seem to spring up 



ARYAN RELIGIONS. 



145 



simultaneously in the minds of the different Aryan peoples. But 
one among the Aryan religions still in pre-historic times broke 
off: abruptly from its relation with the others, and, under a 
teacher whom we may fairly call god-taught, in beauty and 
moral purity passed far beyond the rest. 

This was the Zoroastrian, the faith of the Iranian (ancient 
Persian). branch, a religion which holds a pre- eminence among 
all the religions of antiquity, excepting alone that of the 
Hebrews. And that there is no exaggeration in such a claim 
is sufficiently witnessed by the inspired writings themselves, 
in which the Persian kings are frequently spoken of as if 
they as much as the Hebrews were worshippers of Jehovah. 
" Cyrus the servant of God," " The Lord said unto my lord 
(Cyrus)," are constantly recurring expressions in Isaiah. In 
some respects this Zoroastrianism seems to stand in violent 
opposition to the Aryan religion ; in other lights it appears as 
merely a much higher development of it. In either case, we 
may feel sure that the older system was before the coming of 
the "gold bright" 1 reformer, essentially a polytheism with 
only some yearnings towards monotheism, and that Zoroaster 
settled it upon a firmly monotheistic basis. This very fact 
leaves us little to say about the Iranian system considered 
strictly as a religion. For when once nations have risen to 
the height of a monotheism there can be little essential 
difference in their beliefs ; such difference as there is will be 
in the conception they have of the character of their gods, 
whether it be a high, a relatively high, or relatively low one ; 
and this again is more perhaps a question of moral develop- 
ment than of religion. Their one god, since he made all 
things and rules all things, cannot partake of the exclusive 
nature of any natural phenomenon ; he cannot be a god of 
wind or water, of sun or sky. The Zoroastrian creed did 
afterwards introduce (then for the first time in the world's 
history) a very important element of belief, namely, of the 
distinct origin, and almost if not quite equal powers, of the 
good and evil p) iaciples. But this was later than the time 
of Zarathustra. 

The name which Zarathustra taught the people to give to the 
one God was unconnected with Aryan nature-names, Dyaus 

1 The meaning of Zoroaster, or rather Zarathustra, his true name. 



146 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

or Varuwa, or Indra. He simply called him the " Great 
Spirit," or, inthe Zend, Ahura-mazda; in later Persian, Horrnuzd 
or Ormuzd. He is the all-perfect, all-wise, all-powerful, all- 
beautiful. Ho is the creator of all things. And — still 
nearer to our Christian belief — -before the creation of the 
world, by means whereof the world itself was made, existed 
the Word. Some trace of this same doctrine of the pre- 
existing Word (Hanover, in the Zoroastrian religion) is to be 
found in the Vedas, where he is called Vetch. It would be 
here impossible to enter into an examination of the question 
how far these early religions seem to shadow forth the 
mystical doctrine of the Logos. The evil principle opposed 
to Ormuzd is Agra-Mainyus (Ahrimanes), but in the true 
doctrine he is by no means the equal of God, no more so than 
is Satan. The successive corruption of pure Zoroastrianism 
after the time of its founder is marked by a constant exag- 
geration of the power of the evil principle (suggested perhaps 
by intercourse with deity- worshipping nations of a lower type) 
until Ahrimanes becomes the rival of Ormuzd, co-equal and 
co-eternal with him. 

Such is the simple creed of the Persians, accompanied of 
course by rites and ceremonies, part invented by the reformer, 
part inherited from the common Aryan parentage. It is well 
known that the Persians built no temples, but worshipped 
Ormuzd chiefly upon the mountain-tops ; that they paid great 
respect to alb the elements — that is to air, water, and fire, the 
latter most of all — a belief which they shared with their 
Indian brethren, but stopped far short of worshipping any. 
That they held very strongly the separate idea of the soul, so 
that when once a body had lost its life, they considered it to 
be a thing wholly corrupt and evil ; a doctrine which carried 
in the germ that of the inherent evil of matter, as the philo- 
sophical reader will discern. 

It remains to say something of their religious books. The 
Zend Avestct was supposed to comprise the teaching of 
Zoroaster, and was believed to have been written by him. 
Only one complete book has been preserved — it is called the 
Vendiddd. The Zend language in which the Avestct is written 
is the oldest known form of Persian, older than that in use at 
the time of Darius the Great ; but this is no proof that it 
dates back to the days of Zarathustra. Part of it is in prose 



m 



ARYAN RELIGIONS. 



147 



y 



and part in verse, and as in every literature we find that the 
fragments of verse are they which survive the Conquest, it has 
been conjectured that the songs of the Zend Avesta (Gathas 
they are called) may even have been written by the great 
reformer himself. 



S 



l 2 



J 



CHAPTER X. 



THE OTHER WORLD. 



If the sun-god was so natural a type of a man-like divinity, 
a god suffering some of the pains of humanity, a sort of type 
of man's own ideal life here, it was natural that men should 
question this oracle concerning their future life and their 
hopes beyond the grave. We have seen that the Egyptians 
did so : how they watched the course of the day-star, and, 
seeing him sink behind the sandy desert, pictured a home of 
happiness beyond that waste, a place to be reached by the 
soul after many trials and long wandering in the dim Amenti- 
land which lay between. The Aryans dwelt, as we know, upon 
the slopes of the Hindoo-Koosh or in the level plain beneath ; 
and, if the conjecture be reasonable that a great part of the 
land now a sandy desert was then filled by an inland sea, 1 
many of them must have dwelt upon its borders and seen the 
sun plunge in its wave each evening. Then or afterwards 
they saw this, and interpreted what they saw in the very 
thought of Milton : — 

" Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." 

And thus a belief grew up among them that after death their 
souls would have to cross this ocean to some happy paradise 
which lay beyond in the "home of the sun." 

1 See Chap. iv. p. 61. 



THE OTHER TTOELD. 



149 



The expectation of a journey after death to reach the home 
of shades is all but universal; for this reason was food and 
drink placed with the corpse in the tombs of the stone age : 
and the opinion that the home of the departed lies in the 
west is of an almost equally wide extension. The Egyptian 
religion, which in its wonderful " Book of the Dead " gives 
the oldest (next to the stone age remains) and one of the 
completest accounts of primitive belief, expresses both these 
ideas very clearly ; and to lengthen out the soul's journey, 
which was fancied to last thousands of years, and give inci- 
dent where all must have been really imaginary, the actual 
journey of the mummy to its resting-place was len°thened 
after life to portray the more ghostly wanderings of the 
spirit. As the body was carried across the Nile to be buried 
in the desert, so the soul was believed to begin his journey in 
the dim twilight region of Apap, king of the desert, to cross 
a river more than once, to advance towards the sun, light 
gradually breaking upon him the while, until at last he enters 
the "Palace of the Two Truths," the judgment-hall of Osiris 
(the sun). Last of all, he walks into the sun itself, or is 
absorbed into the essence of the deity. 

It is clear that in all this we have a nucleus of world-belief 
touching the soul's future. Yet along with this there is 
another tendency to view the dead as being still present under 
the mound which conceals his remains, and in obedience to this 
feeling the old stone age men scattered " shards, flints, and 
pebbles," before the mouth of the grave. Such a theory 
would more naturally incline to view the home of the dead as 
being in or beneath the earth, while the other view would look 
for it as lying in the west with the setting sun. So far as 
we know, the first was the prevailing feeling among the Semitic 
people. The old Hebrew writers (with whom the hopes of 
immortality were not strong) speak of going down into the 
grave, 1 a place thought of as a misty, dull, unfeeling, almost 
unreal abode. And lastly, a third element — if not universal, 
common certainly to the Aryan races — will be the conception 
of the soul separating from the body altogether and mounting 
upwards to some home in the sky. All these elements are 
found to exist and co-exist in creeds untaught by revelation : 



1 Sheol is the Hebrew word generally translated "grave" in our 
version. 



150 THE DA"\VN OF BISTORT. 

and the force of the component parts determines the colour of 
their doctrine about the other world. 

Among all the Aryan people the Greeks seem to have turned 
their thoughts farthest away from the contemplation of the 
grave, and though the voice of wonder and imagination could not 
quite be silent upon so important a question, Hades and the 
kingdom of Hades filled a disproportionately small space in 
their creed. They shrank from images of Death, and adorned 
their tombs in cinery urns with wreaths of flowers and figures 
of the dancing Hours : it is doubtful if the god Thanatos has 
ever been pictured by Greek art. And from what they have 
left on record concerning Hades and the realms of death, it 
is evident that they regarded it chiefly from its merely nega- 
tive side, in that aspect which corresponds most exactly to the 
notion of a dark subterraneous kingdom, and not to that of 
a journey to some other distant land. The etymology of their 
mythical King of Souls corresponds too with the same notions. 
Hades means nothing else than A-ides, the unseen. And when 
it was said that the dead had gone to Hades, all that was 
literally meant was that it had gone to the unseen place. But 
later on, the place became personified into the grim deity 
whom we know in Homer, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, 
he to whose share fell, in the partition of the world, the land 
of perpetual night. And the under- world pictured by Homer 
is just of that voiceless, sightless character which accords 
with the name of Hades. Even the great heroes lose almost 
their identity, and all the joy and interest they had in life. 
To " wander mid shadows a shadow, and wail by impassable 
streams," is henceforward their occupation. 

Not that the Greeks had no idea of another world of the 
more heavenly sort ; ideas obtained as a joint inheritance with 
their brother nations ; only their thoughts and their poetry 
do not often centre round such pictures. Their Elysian fields 
are a western sun's home, just after the pattern of the 
Egyptian ; and so are their islands of the west, where, accord- 
ing to one tradition, the just Rhadamanthus had been trans- 
ported when he fled from the power of his brother Minos. 1 
Only, observe, there is this difference between such Elysia and 
the Egyptian house of Osiris — the latter was reached across 

1 The reason why the "blameless Ethiopians" were honoured hy name 
and hy the company of the gods, is most likely to he found in the fact of 
their living, as Homer thought, so near the western border of the world. 



THE OTHEE WORLD. 



151 



the sandy desert, the former are separated by the ocean from 
the abode of men. There then are the heavens of the Greek 
mythology ; while the realm of Hades — or later on the realm 
Hades — might by contrast be called their Hell. Let us look 
a little nearer at this heaven-picture. 

The Caspian Sea — or by wliatever name we call the great 
mediterranean sea which lay before them — would be naturally, 
almost inevitably, considered by the Aryans from their home 
in Bactria to bound the habitable world. The region beyond 
its borders would be a twilight land like the land of Apap 
(the desert-king) of the Egyptians : and still farther away would 
lie the bright region of the sun's proper home. And these ideas 
would be both literal — cosmological conceptions, as we should 
call them — and figurative, or at least mythical, referring to the 
future state of the soul. The beautiful expression of the 
Hebrew for that twilight western region, "the valley of the 
shadow of death," might be used for the Apap land in its 
figurative significance, and not the less justly because there 
creeps in here the other notion of death as of a descending to 
the land of shades, 1 for the two ideas of the western heaven 
and the subterraneous hell were never utterly separated, but, 
among the Aryans at any rate, constantly acted and reacted 
upon one another. So with the Greeks we have as a cosmological 
conception — or let us say, more simply, a part of their world- 
theory — the encircling river Oceanus, with the dim Cim- 
merian land beyond ; and we have the Elysian fields and the 
islands of the west for the most happy dead. And then by 
a natural transfer of ideas the bounding river becomes the 
river of death — Styx and Lethe — and is placed in the region 
of death ; even the Elysian fields at last, suffer the same 
change. 

The Indian religion, too, has its river of death. " On the 
fearful road to Yama's door," says a hymn, "is the terrible 
stream Vaitara??!, in order to cross which I sacrifice a black 
cow." 2 This river of death must be somehow crossed. The 
Greeks, we know, had their grim ferryman. 

' ' Portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina servat 
Terribili squalore Charon : cui plurima mento 
Canities inculta jacet ; stant lumina flamina," &c. 



1 Which was the governing notion in early Hebraic religion. 
2 Weber in Chamb. 1020. 



152 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

The Indians crossed their river of death by a bridge, which 
was guarded by two dogs, not less terrible to evil-doers than 
Charon and Cerberus. 

" A narrow path, an ancient one, stretches there, a path 
untrodden by men, a path I know of." 

On it the wise, who had known Brahma, ascend to the 
dwellings of Svarga, when they have received their dis- 
missal. 1 

The names of these two dogs are interesting. They are the 
sons of that Sarama whom we have already seen sent by 
Indra to recover the lost cattle, whose name, too, signified the 
breeze of morning. Her two sons, the dogs of Yama, being 
so closely connected with the god of the under-world — as 
Sarama is with Indra the sun-god — might be guessed as the 
winds of evening or, more vaguely, the evening, as Sarama is 
the morning. They are so ; and by their name of Sarameyas, 
are even more closely related to Hermes than Sarama was. 2 
We now know why to Hermes was allotted the office of 
Psychopomp, or leader of the shades to the realm of Hades — 
or at least we partly know ; for we see that he is the same 
with the two dogs of Yama in the Indian myth. But they 
are also connected by name with another much more infernal 
being, Cerberus. Their individual names were Cerbura 3 the 
spotted, and Syama the black. Thus the identity of nature is 
confirmed by the identity Oi name. 

Death and sleep are twin-brothers, and we need not be 
surprised to find the Sarameyas, or rather a god Sarameyas, 
addressed as the god of sleep, the protector of the sleeping 
household, as we do find in a very beautiful poem of the 
Big-Vedas. 4 

' ' Destroyer of sickness, guard of the house ; oh, thou who takest all shapes, 
be to us a peace-bringing friend. 
Bay at the robber, Sarameyas, bay at the thief ; why bayest thou at 

the singer of Indra, why art thou angry with me, sleep Sarameyas ? 
The mother sleeps, the father sleeps, the dog sleeps, the clan-father 5 
sleeps, the whole clan sleeps, sleep thou, Sarameyas. 



1 "Whadaranyaka, Ed. Pol. iii. 4 — 7. 

2 According to the proper laws of change from Sanskrit to Greek, Sara- 
meyas, = 'Ep/j.elos, 'Ep/j.ijs. 

3 Wilson, As. Res., iii. 409. 

4 vii. 6, 15. 

5 Father of the "family " in its larger sense ; see the chapter on Early 
Social Life. 



THE OTHER WOULD. 



15: 



Those who sleep by the cattle, those who sleep by the wain, the women 
who lie on the conches, the sweet-scented ones, all these we bring 
to slumber. " 

How these verses breathe of the fragrant air of early pastoral 
life ! In their names, again, of "black " and " spotted," it is 
very probable that the dogs typified two appearances of night, 
black or starry. 

And yet we must remember that Hermes is not a god of 
night, or sleep, but strictly and properly of the wind, and 
that his name, as that of Sarameyas, bears this meaning in its 
construction. The god who bore away the souls to the other 
world, however connected with the night, " the proper time 
for dying," must have been originally the wind. And in this 
we see an exquisite appropriateness. The soul is in its original 
and literal meaning the breath l — " the spirit does but mean 
the breath." What more natural therefore than that the 
3pirit should be carried away by the wind-god. This was 
peculiarly an Aryan idea. Yet let it not be laid to their 
charge as though their theories of the soul and future life 
were less spiritual than those of other nations : quite the 
contrary was the case. So far as they abandoned the notion 
c-f the existence of the body in another state and transferred 
bhe future to the soul, their ideas became higher, and their 
pictures of the other world more amplified. But how, it may 
be asked, did the Aryans pass to their more spiritual concep- 
tion of the soul 1 The more external causes of this progress 
it is worth while briefly to trace. 

The sun, it has been said, acted powerfully upon men's 
minds in pointing the hopes of futurity. And in sketching 
bhe sun-myth which lay concealed in the story of the life of 
Heracles, we noticed one feature which suggests thoughts 
fibout a not yet mentioned element in the funeral rites of the 
Aryans. The fiery setting of the sun would itself suggest a 
flery funeral, and pre-eminently so to a race who seem to have 
been addicted more than any other to this form of interment. 
Baldur, the northern sun-god, likewise receives such a funeral, 
and this more even than the death of Heracles typifies the 
double significance of the sun's westering course. For he 
3ails away upon a burning ship. When therefore this fire 
burial was thoroughly established in custom as the most 
heroic sort of end, it is not likely that men would longer rely 

1 ^ivxh, spiritus, geist, ghost, all from the notion of breathing. 



154 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

upon their belief that the body continued in an after life, the 
thought of the dead man living in his grave or travelling 
thence to regions below must, or should, by the consistent be 
definitely abandoned. In place of it, a theory of the vital 
faculty residing in the breath, which almost amounts to a 
soul distinct from the body, is accepted. Or if the doubting 
brethren still require some visible representation of this vital 
power, the smoke 1 of the funeral pyre may typify the ascend- 
ing soul. Nay, it would appear as though inanimate things 
likewise had some such essence, which by the fire could be 
separated from their material form. For what would formerly 
have been placed with the dead in the grave is now placed 
upon the pyre. In the funeral of Patroclus (//. xxiii.) we have 
a complete picture of these reformed rites, which seem to 
have become common to all the Aryan folk ; nor surely could 
we wish anything more vivid and impressive. The fat oxen 
and sheep are slain before the pyre, and with the fat from 
their bodies and with honey the corpse is liberally anointed. 
Then twelve captives are sacrificed to the manes of the hero ; 
they and his twelve favourite dogs are burnt with him upon the 
pile. We soon see the reason for the anointing of the corpse 
with fat. It was necessary for the peace of the shade that 
his body should be thoroughly burned ; for the funeral 
ceremony was looked upon as the inevitable portal to Hades ; 
without it the ghost still lingered upon earth unable to cross 
the Stygian stream. So afterwards, when the pile will not 
burn, Achilles prays to the North and the West Winds and 
pours libations to them that they come and consummate the 
funeral rite. All night as the flame springs up Achilles 
stands beside it, calling upon the name of his friend and 
watering the ground with libations from a golden cup. To- 
ward morning the flame sinks down ; and then the two winds, 
according to the beautiful language of mythology, return 
homeward across the Thracian sea. 

All the Aryan nationalities practised cremation in some 
form or other, or had practised it ; most only gave it up upon 
the introduction of Christianity. The time is too remote, 
therefore, to say when this form of interment was in truth a 
novelty ; and the fact that the bronze age in Europe is, as 
distinguished from that of the stony, a corpse- burning age, is 

1 tyvxh 5e Kara xOovts, rjirre Kairv6s, 

$xzto. — II. xxiii. 100. 



THE OTIIEK TTOKLD. 155 

one of the reasons which nrge ns to the conclusion that the 
bronze-using invaders were of the Aryan family. 1 The Indians. 
owing to their excessive reverence for Agni the tire-god, 
adhered to the practice most faithfully ; though the very 
same reason (namely, their regard for the purity of fire) made 
the reformed Iranian religion utterly r-epudiate it — a fact 
which might seem strange did we not know how much Zoroas- 
trianism was governed by a spirit of opposition to the older 
faith. 2 Among the Norsemen about the time of the introduc- 
tion of Christianity into Scandinavia, Burn 1 or Bury 1 became 
a test-question, and a constant cause of dispute between the 
rival creeds. 

In the northern religion too, therefore, we have the same 
leading ideas which we have signalised in the Indian or 
Grecian systems. Especially does that notion of the breath 
of the body, or the smoke of the funeral pyre representing 
the soul of the hero and carried upward under care of the 
wind, come prominently forward. This might be expected 
because, it will be remembered, the wind in the northern 
mythology is not, as with the Indians, a servant of Yama 
only, or as with the Greeks a lesser divinity, but the first of 
all the gods. To Odin is assigned the task of collecting the 
souls of heroes who had fallen in battle ; and there are few 
myths more poetical than that which pictures him riding to 
battle fields to execute his mission. He is accompanied by 
his "Valkyriur, " the choosers," a sort of Amazonian houris, 
half human, half godlike, who ride through the air in the 
form of swans ; wherefore they — who are originally perhaps 
the clouds — are often called in the Eddas, Odin's swan maidens. 
It has been said that this myth lived on in after-ages in the 

1 The suggestion of Grimm ( Ueber das Verb, cler Leichen), that burying 
may have been used by an agricultural people, by those who were wont to 
watch the sown seed spring into new life, whereas burning is the custom 
of shepherd races, is not supported by a wide survey of the facts. The 
Aryans were not essentially pastoral, on the whole less so than the Tura- 
nian people who buried (see Herod. 1. 4, for Scythians), and less so again 
than the Semites, who did the same. 

2 The Venclicl&d relates how after that Auramazda had created sixteen 
perfect localities upon earth, Ahrimanes came after (like the sower of tares), 
and did what in him lay to spoil the paradises, by introducing all sorts of 
noxious animals and other abominations, such as the practice of burning 
the dead body or giving it to the water. The Iranians, as is well known, 
suspended their dead upon a sort of grating, and left them to be devoured 
of wild birds. 



15G THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

form of the Phantom, Army and Heme the Hunter : and the 
essential part of it, the myth of the soul carried away by the 
wind, lived on more obscurely in a hundred other tales, some 
of which we may glance at in our nest chapter upon M ytholoqy . 
But while this idea of the mounting soul is often clearly 
expressed — as for instance where in Beowulf : in the last 
scene, the hero is burnt by the sea-shore, it is said of him 
that he wand to wolcum, "curled to the clouds," imaging well 
the curling smoke of the pyre — there lingered on throughout 
other ideas of the death home, a subterraneous land (Helheim, 
Hel's home) ruled over by the goddess Hel,- with its infernal 
Styx-like stream, and the bridge of Indian mythology trans- 
ferred to the lower world. And so much were the three 
distinct ideas interwoven, that in the myth of Baldur each 
one may be traced. For here the sun-god, who is the 
very origin and prototype of the two more exalted elements 
of the creed of the heavenward journey, 3 has himself to stoop 
downward to the gates of Hel. If this legend sanctified for the 
heathens the practice of fire burial, they had certainly so 
much excuse for their obstinate adherence to the older custom, 
as one of the most beautiful myths ever told might plead for 
them. We may look upon it in two aspects — first as an 
image of the setting sun, next as an expression of men's 
thoughts concerning death, and the course of the soul to its 
future home. If in this latter respect the story seems to 
mix up two different myths concerning the other world, we 
need not be surprised at that. 

Baldur dies, as the sun dies each day, and as the summer 
dies into winter. He falls, struck by a dart from the hand 
of his blind brother Hiidr (the darkness), and the shadow of 
death appears for the first time in the homes of Asgard. At 
first the gods knew not what to make of it, " they were struck 
dumb with horror," says the Edda ; 4 but seeing that he is 

1 Beoiculf, the oldest poem in our language (in Early English) is con- 
sidered to have been written during the seventh century. However that 
may be, it breathes the spirit of an earlier (heathen) time, as the instance of 
the burning of Beowulf alone would testify. 

2 Hel, from helja, "to conceal," answered identically to Hades. 

3 This heavenward journey maybe described as at first a haven-ward 
one [i.e. across the sea) ; later as a really heavenward one through the 
air, with the wind-god. 

4 This is the younger, or Prose Edda, of Snorro (Damrisaga 49), not that 
of Scemund. 



THE OTHER WOULD. 157 

really dead, they prepare his funeral pyre. They took his 
ship LLringhom (Ringhorn, the disk of the sun), and on it set 
a pile of wood, with Baldur's horse and his armour, and all 
that he valued most, to which each god added some worthy 
gift. And when Nanna, the wife of Baldur, saw the prepara- 
tions, her heart broke with grief, and she too was laid upon 
the pile. Then they set fire to the ship, which sailed out burning 
into the sea. 

But Baldur himself has to go to Helheim, the dark abode 
beneath the earth, where reigns Hel, 1 the goddess of the dead. 
Then Odin sends his messenger, Hermodr, to the goddess, to pray 
her to let Baldur return once more to earth. For nine days 
and nine nights Hermodr rode through dark glens, so dark, 
that he could riot discern anything until he came to the river 
Gjoll ("the sounding " — notice that here the Stygian re- 
appears), over which he rode by Gjoll's bridge, which was 
pleasant with bright gold. A maiden sat there keeping the 
bridge ; she inquired of him his name and lineage — for, said 
she, " Yestereve five bands of dead men rid over the bridge, 
yet they did not shake it so much as thou hast done. But 
thou hast not death's hue upon thee; why then ridest thou 
here on the way to Hel 1 " 

" I ride to Hel," answered Hermodr, " to seek Baldur. Hast 
thou perchance seen him pass this v?ay 1 " 

"Baldur," answered she, "hath ridden over Gjoll's bridge. 
But yonder, northward, lies the road to Hel." 

Hermodr then rode into the palace, where he found his 
brother Baldur filling the highest place in the hall, and in his 
company he passed the night. The next morning he besought 
Hel, that she would let Baldur ride home with him, assuring 
her how great the grief was among the gods. 

Hel answered, " It shall now be proved whether Baldur 
be so much loved as thou sayest. If, therefore, all things 
both living and lifeless weep for him, then shall he return. 
But if one thing speak against him or refuse to weep, he shall 
be kept in Helheim." 

And when Hermodr had delivered this answer, the gods 
sent off messengers throughout the whole world, to tell every - 

1 Hel, in Norse mythology, is a person, the regent of Helheim Just in 
the same way Hades is in Homer always a god, never a place. The idea 
concerning Helheim seems to have been that all who were not slain in 
battle went to its dark shore. 



158 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

thing to weep, in order that Baldur might be delivered out of 
Helheim. All things freely complied with this request, both 
men and every other living thing, and earths, and stones, and 
trees, and metals, just as thou hast no doubt seen these things 
weep when they are brought from a cold place into a hot one. 
As the messengers were returning, and deemed that their 
mission had been successful, they found an old hag, named 
Thokk, 1 sitting in a cavern, and her they begged to weep 
Baldur out of Helheim. But she said : — 

"Thokk will wail Nought quick or dead 

With dry ejes For carl's sou care I. 

Baldur's bale-fire. Let Hel hold her own." 

So Baldur remained in Helheim. Such was the sad con- 
clusion of the myth of which the memory is kept up even in 
these days. For in Norway and Sweden — nay, in some parts 
of Scotland, the bale-Jires celebrating the bale or death of the 
sun-god are lighted on the day when the sun passes the 
highest point in the ecliptic. Baldur will not, said tradition, 
remain for ever in Helheim. A day will come, the twilight 
of the gods, when the gods themselves will be destroyed in a 
final victorious contest with the evil powers. And then, 
when a new earth has arisen from the deluge which destroys 
the old, Baldur, the god of Peace, will come from Death's 
home to rule over this regenerate world. A sublime myth — 
if indeed it can be called a myth. 

1 i.e. Dokkr, dark. She sits in a cave because both day and night 
are imaged as coming from a cave. So Shelley sings — 

" Swiftly walk over the western cave, 
Spirit of Night, 

Out of thy misty eastern cave." 



CHAPTER XI. 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. 



If we found it difficult to reduce to a consistent unity the 
religious ideas of the Aryan races, what hope have we to 
find any thread through the labyrinth of their unbridled 
imagination in dealing with more fanciful subjects 1 The world 
is all before them where to choose, nature, in her multi- 
tudinous works and ever-changing shows, is at hand to give 
breath to the faculty of myth-making, and lay the foundation 
of all the stories which have ever been told. The two ele- 
ments concurrent to the manufacture of mythologies are the 
varying phenomena in nature, and that which is called the 
anthropomorphic (personifying) faculty in man. Not, in- 
deed, that all myths represent natural appearances, some 
may well enough relate events, human adventures ; but the 
gods themselves being in almost every instance the personi- 
fications of phenomena or powers of nature, the myths of 
widest extension were necessarily occupied with these. 
Religion being the greatest concern of man, the myths 
which allied themselves most closely to his religious ideas 
would be those which maintained the longest life and most 
universal acceptance. In reviewing some of the Aryan myths 
in a hasty and general review as it must needs be — the 
preceding chapter will serve as a guide to the myths most 
losely connected with religious notions, which have a chief 
claim upon our attention. Indeed, conversely, it was the fact 
that so many myths cling around certain natural phenomena 
which allowed us, with proper reservation, to point these 



1G0 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

out as the phenomena which held the most intimate place 
in men's minds and hearts. With proper reservations, because 
the highest abstracted god does not lend himself to the 
myth-making faculty. He stands apart from the polytheistic 

cycle below him the nature-gods who are also the heroes of 

the mythologies. 

With a backward glance, then, to what has been already 
written, we may expect the chief myth systems to divide them- 
selves under certain classes corresponding with the god— or 
natural phenomenon — who is their concern. We may expect 
to find myths relating especially to the labours of the sun, 
like those of Heracles and Thorr, or to the wind, like that of 
Hermes stealing the cattle of Apollo, or to the earth sleeping 
in the embrace of winter, or sorrowing for the loss of her 
greenery, or joying again in her recovered life. And again 
we may look to find myths more intimately concerned with 
death, and with the looked-for future of the soul. These will 
raino-le like mingling streams, but we shall often be able to 
trace their origin. 

The diversity of the natural phenomena which give them 
rise will not in any way hinder the myths from reproducing 
the human elements which have, since the world began, held 
their pre eminence in romance and history. There will be 
love stories, stories of battle and victory, of magic and strange 
disguises, of suddenly acquired treasure, and, most attractive of 
all to the' popular mind, stories of princes and princesses whose 
princedom is hidden under a servile station or beggar's gaber- 
dine and of heroes who allow their heroism to rust for a 
while in strange inaction, that 

" Imitate the sun, 
Who doth permit the hase contagious clouds 
To smother up his beauty from the world, 
That, when he please again to he himself, 
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at." 

Not necessarily because such heroes were the sun, but rather 
that the tales, appealing so correctly to the common sym- 
pathies of human nature, attach themselves pre-eminently 
to the great natural hero, the sun god. 

Yet to beo-in with the sun god, his love stories relate most 
commonly the pursuit of the dawn, a woman, by the god of day. 
She flies at his approach ; or if the two are married in early 
morning when the day advances, the dawn dies or the sun 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. 161 

leaves her to pursue his allotted journey. We read how Apollo 
pursued Daphne, while she still fled from him, and at last, 
praying to the gods, was changed into a laurel, which ever 
afterwards remained sacred to the son of LCto. There is 
nothing new in the story ; it might be related of any hero. 
Yet, as we find Greek art so often busy with it, we might 
guess that it had obtained for some reason a hold more than 
commonly firm upon the popular imagination. And when we 
turn from the Greek to the Sanskrit we are able to unravel 
the myth and show it, so far as the names are concerned, 
peculiar to the sun-god. Daphne is the Sanskrit Dahana, 
that is to say, the Dawn. 

A tenderer love story is that which speaks of the sun and 
the dawn as united at the opening of the day, but of the separa- 
tion which follows when the sun reveals himself in his true 
splendour. The parting, however, will not be eternal, for 
the sun in the evening shall sink into the arms of the west, as 
in the morning he left those of the east — all the physical 
appearances at sundown will correspond with those of the 
dawn — so in poetical language he will be said to return to his 
love again at the evening of life. Well according with its 
natural origin and native attractiveness, we find this story 
repeated almost identically as regards its chief incidents by 
all the branches of the Aryan family. For an Indian version 
of it the reader may consult the story of Urva.si and Pururavas 
told by Mr. Max Miiller from one of the Vedas. 1 Urvasi 
is a fairy who falls in love with Pururavas, a mortal, and 
consents to become his wife, on condition that she should 
never see him without his royal garment on, " for this is the 
manner of women." For a while they lived together happily ; 
but the Gandhavas, the fairy beings to whom Urva-si belonged, 
were jealous of her love for a mortal, and they laid a plot to 
separate them. " Now there was a ewe with two lambs tied to 
the couch of Urvasi and Pururavas, and the fairies stole one of 
them, so that Urvasi upbraided her husband and said, ' They 
steal my darlings as though I lived in a land where there is 
no hero, and no man.' A.nd Pururavas said, ' How can that 
be a land without heroes or men where I am,' and naked he 
sprang up. Then the Gandhavas sent a flash of lightning, 

1 Or strictly speaking the Brahmana of the Yagur Veda. The Brah- 
mana is the scholiast (as it were) or targum of the original text. Urvasi 
is Ushas, the Dawn. 



162 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

and Urvasi saw her husband naked as by daylight. Then 
she vanished. ' I come back,' she said ; and went." 

Cupid loves Psyche as Pururavas Urvasi, but here the 
story is so far changed that the woman breaks the condition 
laid upon their union. Not this time by accident, but from 
the evil counselling of her two sisters, Psyche disobeys her 
husband. They have long been, married, but she has never 
seen his face ; and doubts begin to arise lest some horrid 
monster, and not a god, may be the sharer of her couch. So 
she takes the lamp, and when she deems her husband is fast 
locked in sleep, gazes upon the face of the god of love. 

" But as she turned at last 
To quench the lamp, there happed a little thing 
That quenched her new delight, for flickering, 
The treacherous flame cast on his shoulder fair 
A burning drop ; he woke, and seeing her there, 
The meaning of that sad sight knew full well ; 
Nor was there need the piteous tale to tell." l 

It may be said that we have here wandered far from the 
sun. Cupid or Eros is in no sense a sun-god ; nor has Psyche 
any proved connection with Ushas, the Dawn. This is true ; 
once a sun-myth does not imply always a sun-myth. So 
much the contraiy, that it is part of our business to show how 
stories, first appropriated to Olympus or Asgard, may descend 
to take their place among the commonest collection of nursery 
talcs It is the case with this myth of the Dawn. The 
reader's acquaintance with nursery literature has probably 
already anticipated the kinship to be claimed by one of the 
most familiar childish legends. But as one more link to 
rivet the bond of union between Urvasi and Pururavas and 
Beauty and, the Beast, let us look at a story of Swedish origin 
called Prince Hatt under the Earth. 

" There was once, very very long ago, a king who had three 
daughters, all exquisitely fair, and much more amiable 
than other maidens, so that their like was not to be found 
far or near. But the youngest princess excelled her sisters, 
not only in beauty, but in goodness of heart and kind- 
ness of disposition. She was consequently greatly beloved 
bv all, and the king himself was more fondly attached to her 
than to either of his other daughters. 

1 Morris, Earthly Paradise, : Cupid and Psyche. 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. 163 

" It happened one autumn that there was a fair in a town 
not far from the king's residence, and the king himself resolved 
on sroinfi: to it with his attendants. When on the eve of 
departure he asked his three daughters what they would 
like for fairings, it being his constant custom to make them 
some present on his return home. The two elder princesses 
began instantly to enumerate precious things of curious 
kinds ; one would have this, the other that ; but the youngest 
daughter asked for nothing. At this the king was surprised, 
and asked her whether she would not like some ornament or 
other ; but she answered that she had plenty of gold and 
jewels. When the king, however, would not desist from 
urging her, she at length said, ' There is one thing which I 
would gladly have, if only I might venture to ask it of my 
father.' 'What may that be?' inquired the king, 'say 
what it is, and if it be in my power you shall have it ' 'It is 
this,' replied the princess, ' I have heard talk of the three 
singing leaves, and them I wish to have before anything else 
in the world.' The king laughed at her for making so 
trifling a request, and at length exclaimed, ' I cannot say that 
you are very covetous, and would rather by half that you had 
asked for some greater gift. You shall, however, have what 
you desire, though it should cost me half my realm.' He 
then bade his daughters farewell and rode away." 

Of course he goes to the fair, and on his way home happens 
to hear the three singing leaves, " which moved to and fro, 
and as they played there came forth a sound such as it would 
be impossible to describe." The king was glad to have found 
what his daughter had wished for, and was about to 
pluck them, but the instant he stretched forth his hand 
towards them, they withdrew from his grasp, and a powerful 
voice was heard from under the earth saying, " Touch not my 
leaves." " At this the king was somewhat surprised, and asked 
who it was, and whether he could not purchase the leaves for gold 
or good words. The voice answered, 'I am Prince Hatt under the 
Earth, and you will not get my leaves either with good or bad as 
you desire. Nevertheless I will propose to you one condition.' 
' What condition is that 1 ' asked the king with eagerness. 
' It is,' answered the voice, ' that you promise me the first 
living thing that you meet when you return to your palace.' " 
As we anticipate, the first thing which he meets is his youngest 
daughter, who therefore is left with lamentation under the 

M 2 



L64 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

hazel bush : and, as is its wont on such occasions, the ground 
opens, and she finds herself in a beautiful palace. Here she 
lives long and happily with Prince Hatt, upon condition that 
she shall never see him. But at last she is permitted to pay 
a visit to her father and sisters ; and her stepmother succeeds 
in awakening her curiosity and her fears, lest she should really 
be married to some horrid monster. The princess thus allows 
herself to be persuaded to strike a light and gaze on her 
husband while he is asleep. Of course, just as her eyes have 
lighted upon a beautiful youth he awakes, and as a consequence 
of her disobedience — (here the story alters somewhat) — he is 
struck blind, and the two are obliged to wander over the 
earth, and endure all manner of misfortunes before Prince 
Hatt's sight is at last restored. 

The sun is so apt to take the place of an almost superhuman 
hero, that most of the stories of such when they are purely 
mythical relate some part of the sun's daily course and labours. 
Thus in the Greek, Perseus, The*eus, Jason, are in the main 
sun-heroes, though they mingle with their histories tales of 
real human adventure. One of the most easily traceable sun- 
stories is that of Perseus and the Gorgon. The later represen- 
tations of Medusa in Greek art give her a beautiful dead face 
shrouded by luxurious snaky tresses ; but the earlier art 
presents us with a round face, distorted by a hideous grin 
from ear to ear, broad cheeks, low forehead, over which curl 
a few llattened locks. We at once see the likeness of this 
face to the full moon ; a likeness which, without regard to 
mythology, forces itself upon us ; and then the true story of 
Perseus flashes upon us as the extinction of the moon by the 
sun's light. This is the baneful Gorgon's head, the full moon, 
which so many nations superstitiously believed could exert a 
fatal power over the sleeper ; and when slain by the son of Danae, 
it is the pale ghostlike disc which we see by day. It is very 
interesting to see how the Greeks made a myth of the moon 
in its — one may say — literal unidealized aspect, as well as the 
countless more poetical myths which spoke of the moon as a 
beautiful goddess, queen of the night, the virgin huntress 
serrounded by her pack of dogs — the stars. In the instance 
of Medusa these two aspects of one natural appearance are 
brought into close relationship, for Athene — in her character 
of moon-goddess — wears the Gorgon's head upon her shield. 
As we have passed on to speak of the moon, we may as well 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. 165 

notice some of the other moon-myths : though in the case of 
these, as of the myths of the sun, our only object must be to 
show the characteristic forms which this order of tales assume-, 
so that the way may be partly cleared for their detection ; 
nothing like a complete list of the infinitely varied shapes 
which the same nature-story can assume being possible. < ine 
of the most beautiful of moon-myths is surely the tale of 
Artemis (Diana) and Endymion. This last, the beautiful 
shepherd of Latinos, 1 by his name "He who enters," is in 
origin the sun just entering the cave of night. 2 The moon 
looking upon the setting sun is a signal for his long sleep, 
which in the myth becomes the sleep of death. The same 
myth reappears in the well known German legend of Tann- 
hauser. He enters a mountain, the Venusberg, or Mount of 
Venus, and is not sent: to sleep, but laid under an enchant- 
ment by the goddess within. In other versions of the legend 
the mountain is called not Venusberg but Horelberg, and from 
this name we trace the natural origin of the myth. For 
there was an old moon-goddess of the Teutons called Horel or 
Hursel. She therefore is the enchantress in this case ; and 
the Christian knight falls a victim to the old German moon- 
goddess. It has been supposed that the story of the massacre 
of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins — whose bones 
they show to this day at Cologne — arose out of the same nature- 
myth ; and that this St. Ursula is also none other than 
Hursel, followed by her myriad troop of stars. 3 

•-The northern religion has been fruitful of its sun-myths, 
though in this system the sun is not pre-eminent, but holds 
an almost equal place with the wind — the myths of Thorr and 
Baldur are balanced by those of Odin in his character of wind- 
god. And both sorts of stories have descended to a place in 
our nursery tales. Thorr, the champion of men, and the 
enemy of the Jb'tuns (giants), becomes in later days Jack the 
Giant Killer ; Odin, by a like descent, the Wandering Jew, or 
the Pied Piper of Hameln. And thus through a hundred 
popular legends we can detect the natural appearance out of 
which they originally sprang. Let us look at them first in their 

1 Connected with Lethe, concealment or forgetfulness, as with Leto, 
the mother of Apollo. All signify the darkness. 

3 See last eh. p. 158. Endymion is found by Artemis sleeping in a 
eave of Latmop. 

3 See Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, &e. 



166 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

old heathen forms. Thorr, the hero and sun god, the northern 
Kerakles, distinguishes himself as the implacable enemy of 
the rime-giants and frost-giants, the powers of cold and 
darkness; and to carry on his hostilities, he makes constant 
expeditions, "farings" into-giant-land, or Jiitunheim, as it 
is called ; and these expeditions generally end in the thorough 
discomfiture of the strong hut rude and foolish personifications 
of barren nature. One of these, the adventure to the house 
of Thrym, 1 is to recover Thorr' s hammer, which has been 
stolen by the giant and hidden many feet beneath the earth. 
A spy is sent from Asgard (the city of the gods) into Jotun- 
heim, and brings back word that Thrym will not give up 
his prize unless Freyja — goddess of Spring and Beauty — be 
given to him as his bride ; and at first Thorr proposes this 
alternative to Freyja herself, little, as may be guessed, to her 
satisfaction. 

14 Wroth was Freyja 

And with furv fumed, 

All the iEsir's hall 

Under her trembled ; 

Broken flew the famed 

Brisinga-necklace." 2 

But the wily Loki settles the difficulty. Thorr shall to 
Jotunheim clad in Freyja's weeds, 

" Let by his side, keys jingle, and a neat coif set on his head." 
80 taking Loki with him clad as a serving- maid, the god fares 
to Thrym' s house, a-; though he were the looked- for bride. 
It must, one would suppose, have been an anxious time for 
Thorr and Loki, while unarmed they sate in the hall of 
the giant ; for the hero could not avoid raising some 
suspicions by his unwomanly appearance and demeanour. 
He alone devoured, we are told, an ox, eight salmon, 
" and all the sweetmeats women should have," and he 
drank eight " scalds " of mead. Thrym naturally exclaimed 
that he never saw brides eat so greedily or drink so much 
mead. But the " all-crafty " Loki sitting by, explained how 

1 He is actually a reduplication of Thorr ; for his name means thunder, as 
does Thorr's. Thorr is of course much more than a god of thunder only ; but 
his hammer is undoubtedly the thunder-holt. Thrym represents the same 
power associated with beings of frost and snow, the winter thunder, in fact. 
This stealing Thorr's hammer is merely a repetition of the idea implied by 
his name and character. 

- Which Freyja wore. 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. 167 

^his was owing to the hurry Freyja was in to behold her 
bridegroom, which left her no time to eat for the eight nights 
during which she had been journeying there. And so again 
when Thrym says — 

" Why are so piercing Freyja's glances ? 
Methinks that fire bums from her eyes." 

Loki explains that for the same reason she had not slept upon 
her journey ; and the foolish, vain giant is gulled once more. 
At last the coveted prize, the hammer, was brought in to 
consecrate the marriage, and " Tlmrr's soul laughed in his 
breast, when the fierce-hearted his hammer recognised. He 
slew Thrym, the Thursar's (giant's) lord, and the Jdtun'srace 
crushed he utterly." At another time Thorr engages Alvis, 
" of the race of the Thursar," l in conversation upon all manner 
of topics, concerning the names which different natural objects 
bear among men, among gods, among giants, and among 
dwarfs, until he guilefully keeps him above earth till after 
sunrise, which it is not possible for a dwarf or Jotun to do and 
Jive. So Alvis burst asunder. 2 This tale shows clearly 
enough how much Thorr's enemies are allied with darkness. 

Thorr is not always so successful. In another of his 
journeys 3 the giants play a series of tricks upon him, quite 
suitable to the Teutonic conception of the cold north, as a 
place of magic, glamour, and illusion. One giant induces the 
thunderer to mistake a mountain for him, and to hurl at it 
the death-dealing bolt — his hammer Mjblnir. Afterwards 
he is set to drain a horn which he supposes he can finish 
at a draught, but finds that after the third pull at it, 
scarcely more than the rim has been left bare ; at the same 
time Loki engages in an eating match with one Logi, and is 
utterly worsted. But in reality Thorr's horn has reached to 
the sea, and he has been draining at that ; while the antagonist 
of Loki is the devouring fire itself. Afterwards Thorr cannot 
lift a cat from the ground, for it is in truth the great Midgard 

1 Giant does not really translate Thurs. Most of the Thursar were giants 
as opposed to the Dvargar, the dwarfs. But this Alvis (all-wise) is spoken 
of as a dwarf. 

2 There is a clear recollection of this in the end of Eumpelstiltskin. 

3 This story, be it said, comes only from the younger Edda. 2s o hint of 
it in the older. 



1G8 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

serpent which girds the whole earth, and he is overcome 
in a wrestling match with an old hag, whose name is Ella, 
that is, Old Age or Death. Enough has been said in these 
stories to show how directly the cloak of Thorr descends 
to tho heroes of our nursery tales, Jack the Giant Killer and 
Jack and the Bean-Stalk. 

Closely connected with the sun god are the mythical heroes 
of northern poetry, the Perseus or Theseus of Germany and 
Scandinavia. The famous Sigurd the Volsung, the slayer of 
Fafnir, or his counterpart Siegfrid of the Nibelung song, 
or again the hero of our own English poem Beowulf, 1 are 
especially at war with dragons — which represent the powers 
of darkness — or with beings of a Jotun-like character. They 
are all discoverers of treasure ; and this so far corresponds with 
the character of Thorr that the thunderbolt is often spoken 
of as the revealer of the treasures of the earth, and that the 
sign of it was employed as a charm for that purpose. And 
when we read the tales or poems in which these adventures 
are told we see how entirely unhuman in character they were, 
and how much the actors in the drama bear the reminiscences 
of the natural phenomena from which they sprang. This is 
especially the case with Beowulf. The poem is weird and 
imaginative in tbe highest degree : the atmosphere into which 
we are thrown seems to be the misty delusive air of Jiitun- 
heim, and the unearthly beings whom Beowulf encounters must 
have had birth within the shadows of night and in the mystery 
which attached to the wild unvisited tracts of country. 
Grendel, a horrid ghoul who feasts on human beings, whom 
Beowulf wrestles with (as Thorr wrestles with Ella) and 
puts to death, is described as an " inhabiter of the moors," 
the " fen and fastnesses ; " he comes upon the scene " like a 
cloud from the misty hills, through the wan night a shadow- 
walker stalking ' ' ; and of him and his mother it is said, 

" They a father know not, 
Whether any of them was 
Born before 
Of the dark ghosts." 

1 " Beowulf," which is thought to have been composed in English about 
the seventh century, relates the adventures of a prince of Gothland, in 
Sweden. Though made and sung in a Christian country, the people of 
whom it speaks are evidently heathens. 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. LG9 

Tliey inhabit, in a secret land, the wolves' retreat, and iu 
" windy ways — 

Where the mountain stream 
Under the nesses mist 
Downward flows." 

Of the myths which spring from the wind, and which may 
therefore be reckoned the children of Odin, by far the most 
interesting are those which attach to him in his part of Psyco- 
ponip, or soul-leader, and which form a part, therefore, of an 
immense series of tales connected with the Teutonic ideas of 
death as they were detailed in the last chapter. There were 
many reasons why these occupied a leading place in middle- 
age legend. The German race is naturally a gloomy or at 
least a thoughtful one : and upon this natural gloom and 
thoughtf ulness the influence of their new faith acted with re- 
doubled force, awaking men to thoughts not only of a new life but 
of a new death. Popular religion took as strong a hold of the 
darker as of the brighter aspects of Catholicism, and was busy 
grafting the oldernotions of the soul's future state upon the fresh 
stock of revealedreligion. Thus many of thepopular notions both 
of heaven and hell may be discovered in the beliefs of heathen 
Germany. Let us, therefore, abandoning .the series of myths 
which belong properly to the Aryan religious beliefs as given 
in chapter ix. (though upon these, so numerous are they, 
we seem scarcely to have begun), turn to others which illus- 
trate our last chapter. Upon one we have already touched ; 
Odin, as chooser of the dead, hurrying through the air towards 
a battle-field with his troop of shield-maidens, the Valkyriur 1 ; 
or if we like to present the simpler nature-myth, the wind 
bearing away the departing breath of dying men, and the 
clouds which he carries on with him in his course. For there 
is no doubt that these Valkyriur, these shield or swan 
maidens, who have the power of transforming themselves at 
pleasure into birds, are none other than the clouds, 
perhaps like the cattle of Inclra, especially the clouds of 
sunrise. We meet with them elsewhere than in northern 
mythology. The Urvasi, whose story we have been 
relating just now, after the separation from her mortal 
husband changes herself into a bird and is found by Pururavas 

1 Valkyria, sing., Valkyriur, pi. 



170 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

in this disguise, sitting with her friends the Gandhavas npon 
the water of a lake. This means the clouds of evening sitting 
upon the wide blue sky. The Valkyriur themselves, when 
they have been married to men, often leave them as the 
Indian fairy left her husband, and lest they should do so it is 
not safe to restore them the swan's plumage which they wore 
as Valkyriur ; should they again obtain their old equipment 
they will be almost sure to don it and desert their home to 
return to their old life. The Valkyriur, therefore, are clouds ; 
and in so far as they appear in the legends of other nations 
have no intimate connection with Odin. But when they are the 
clouds of sunset and when Odin in his character of soul-bearer 
becomes before all things the wind of the setting sun (that 
breeze which so often rises just as the sun goes down, and 
which itself might stand for the escaping soul of the dying 
day), then the Valkyriur make part of an ancient myth 
of death. And almost all the stories of swan maidens, or 
transformations into swans, which are so familiar to the ears 
of childhood, originate from Odin's warrior maidens. If we 
notice the plot of these stories, we shall see that in them too 
the transformation usually takes place at sun-setting or sun- 
rising. For instance, in the tale of the six swans in Grimm's 
Household Stories, 1 the enchanted brothers of the princess can 
only reappear in their true shapes just one hour before 
sunset. 

In Christian legends, subject to the changes which inevitably 
follow a change of belief, the gods of Asgard become demoniacal 
powers ; and Odin the chief god takes the place of the arch- 
fiend. For this part he is doubly suited by his character of 
conductor of the souls ; if he formerly led them to heaven, he 
now thrusts them down to hell. But so many elements came 
together to compose the mediaeval idea of the devil that in 
this character the individuality of Odin is scarcely preserved. 
At times a wish to revive something of this personal character 
was felt, especially when the frequent sound of the wind awoke 
old memories ; then Odin re-emerges as some particular fiend 
or damned human soul. He is the "Wandering Jew, a being 
whose eternal restlessness well keeps up the character of the 
wind blowing where it listeth : or he is, as we have said, the 
Wild Huntsman of the Harz, and of many other places. 

1 Kinder-u. Hausmarchen, 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. 171 

The name of this being, Hackelberg, or Hackelbarend 
(cloak bearer), sufficiently points him out as Odin, who 
in the heathen traditions had been wont to wander over the 
earth clad in a blue cloak, 1 and broad hat, and carrying a 
staff. Hackelberg, the huntsman to the Duke of Brunswick, 
had refused even on his death-bed the ministrations of a priest, 
and swore that the cry of his dogs was pleasanter to him than 
holy rites, and that he would rather hunt for ever upon earth 
than go to heaven. " Then," said the man of God, " thou 
shalt hunt on until the Day of Judgment." Another legend 
relates that Hackelberg was a wicked noble who was wont to 
hunt on Sundays as on other days, and (here comes in the 
popular version) to impress the poor peasants to aid him. One 
day he was joined suddenly by two horsemen. One was mild of 
aspect, but the other was grim and fierce, and from his horse's 
mouth and nostril breathed tire. Hackelberg turned then 
from his good angel and went on with his wild chase, and now, 
in company of the fiend, he hunts and will hunt till the last day. 
He is called in Germany the hel-jdger, " hell hunter." The pea- 
sants hear his " hoto " " hutu," as the storm- wind rushes past 
their doors, and if they are alone upon the hill- side they hide 
their faces while the hunt goes by. The white owl, Totosel, 
is a nun who broke her vows, and now mingles her " tutu " 
(towhoo) with his " holoa." He hunts, accompanied by two dogs 
(the two dogs of Yama), in heaven, all the year round, save 
upon the twelve nights between Christmas and Twelfth-night. 2 
If any door is left open upon the night when Hackelberg goes by, 
one of the dogs will run in and lie down in the ashes of the 
hearth, nor will any power be able to make him stir. During 
all the ensuing year there will be trouble in that household, 
but when the year has gone round and the hunt comes again, the 
unbidden guest will rise from his couch, and, wildly howling, 
rush forth to join his master. Strangely refracted there lurks 
in this part of the story a ray of the Yedic sleep-god Sarameyas. 

1 i.e. the sky. See Grimm, DeuscJie Myth. s.v. Hackelberg ; and also 
two very interesting articles by A. Ktihn, Zeitsch. fur devtsch. Alterth. v. 
379, vi. 117, showing relationship of Hackelbarend and the Sarameyas. 

2 These twelve nights occupy in the middle-age legends the place of a 
sort of battle-ground between the powers of light and darkness. One 
obvious reason of this is that they lie in midwinter, when the infernal 
powers are the strongest. Another reason perhaps is that they lie be- 
tween the great Christian feast and the great heathen one, the feast of 
Yule. Each party might be expected to put forth its full power. 



172 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

" Destroyer of sickness, guard of the house, oh, thou who 
takest all shapes, be to us a peace- bringing friend." 

The Valkyruir in their turn are changed by the mediaeval 
spirit into witches. The Witches' Sabbath, the old beldames 
on broom-sticks riding through the air, to hold their revels on 
the Brocken, reproduce the swan maidens hurrying to join the 
flight of Udm. And, again, changed once more, " Old Mother 
Goose" is but a more modern form of a middle-age witch, 
when the thought of witches no longer strikes terror. And 
while we are upon the subject of witches it may be well to 
recall how the belief in witches has left its trace in our word 
" nightmare." Mara was throughout Europe believed to be the 
name of a very celebrated witch somewhere in the north, 
though the exact place of her dwelling was variously stated. 
And it is highly probable that this name Mara was once a 
bye-name of the death-goddess Hel, and itself etymologically 
connected with the name of the sea (Meer), the sea being, as 
we have seen, according to one set of beliefs, the home of the 
soul. 

Odin, or a being closely analogous with him, reappears in 
the familiar tale of the Pied Piper of Hameln, he who, when 
the whole town of Hameln suffered from a plague of rats 
and knew not how to get rid of them, appeared suddenly 
— no one knew from whence — and professed himself able 
to accomplish their wish by means of the secret magic of his 
pipe. But it is a profanation to tell the enchanted legend 
otherwise than in the enchanted language of Browning : — 

" Into the street the piper stept, 
Smiling first a little smile, 
As if he knew what magic slept 
In his quiet pipe the while ; 
Then like a musical adept 
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled." 

Then the townsfolk, freed from their burden, refused the 
piper his promised rewai'd, and scornfully chased him from 
the town. On the 26th of June he was seen again, but this 
time (Mr. Browning has not incorporated this little fact) fierce 
of aspect and dressed like a huntsman, yet still blowing upon 
the magic pipe. 

Now it is not the rats who follow, but the children : — 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. 173 

" All the little boys and girls, 
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, 
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, 
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after 
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter." 

And so lie leads them away to the Koppelberg Hill, and 

" Lo, as they reached the mountain side, 
A wondrous portal opened wide, 
As if a cavern were suddenly hollowed ; 
And the Piper advanced ami the children followed. 
And when all were in, to the very last, 
The door in the mountain side shut fast." 

This too is a myth of death. It is astonishing when we 
come to examine into the origin of popular tales how many 
we find that had at first a funeral character. This Piper 
hath indeed a magic music which none can disobey, for it is the 
whisper of death ; he himself is the soul-leading Hermes (the 
wind, the piper), or at least Odin, in the same ohice. But the 
legend is, in part at any rate, Slavonic ; for it is a Slavonic 
notion which likens the soul to a mouse. 1 When we have got 
this clue, which the modern folk lore easily gives us, the Odinic 
character of the Piper becomes very apparent. Nay, in this 
particular mj^th we can almost trace a history of the meeting 
of two peoples, Slavonic and German, and the junction of 
their legends Let us suppose there had been some great and 
long remembered epidemic which had proved peculiarly fatal 
to the children of Hameln and the country round about. The 
Slavonic dwellers there — and in pre-historic times the Slaves 
probably spread quite as far as the Weser — would speak of 
these deaths mythically as the departure of the mice (i.e. the 
souls), and perhaps keeping the tradition, which we know to 
be universally Aryan, of a water-crossing, might tell of the 
mice as having gone to the water. Or further, they might 
feign that these souls were led there by a piping wind god : 
he too is the common property of the Aryan folk. Then the 
Germans coming in. and wishing to express the legend in their 

1 Perhaps for a reason like that which made the beetle a symbol of the 
soul or immortality among the Egyptians, namely, because the mouso 
hibernates like the sleeping earth. It is worth noticing that Anubis, tha 
Egyptian psychopomp, is also a wind-god. — A. K. 



1 74 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

mythological form, would tell how the same Piper had piped 
away all the cJdldren from the town. So a double story would 
spring up about the same event. The Weser represents one 
image of death, and might have served for the children as well 
as for the mice : to make the legend fuller, however, another 
image is selected for them, the dark, "concealed" place, 
namely, Hel, or the cave of Night and Death. 

The two images of death which occur in the last story rival 
each other through the field of middle-age legend and ro- 
mance. When we hear of a man being borne along in a 
boat, or lying deep in slumber beneath a mountain, we may 
let our minds wander back to Baldur sailing across the ocean 
in his burning ship Hrinqkorn, and to the same Baldur in the 
halls of Hel's palace. The third image of death is the blazing 
pyre unaccompanied by any sea voyage. One or other of 
these three allegories meet us at every turn. If the hero has 
been snatched away by fairy power to save him from dying, 
and the last thing seen of him was in a boat — as Arthur 
disappears upon the lake Avalon— the myth holds out the 
hope of his return, and sooner or later the story of this return 
will break off and become a separate legend. Hence the 
numerous half-unearthly heroes, such as Lohengrin, who come 
men know not whence, and are first seen sleeping in a boat 
upon a river. These are but broken halves of complete 
myths which should have told of the former disappearance of 
the knight by the same route. Both portions really belong 
to the tale of Lohengrin ; he went away first in a ship in search 
of the holy grail, and in the truest version 1 returns in like 
manner in a boat drawn by a sivan. In some tales he is called 
the Knight of the Swan. He comes suddenly, in answer to a 
prayer to Heaven for help, uttered by the distressed Else 
of Brabant. But he does not return at once again to the 
Paradise which has sent him to earth. He remains upon 
earth, and becomes, the husband of Else, and a famous 
warrior ; and part of another myth entwines itself with his 
story. Else must not ask his name : but she disobeys his 
imperative command, and this fault parts them for ever. 
Here we have Cupid and Psyche, or Prince Hatt and his Wife, 
over again. The boat appears once more drawn by the same 

1 There are at least six different versions of the same legend given in 
Grimm's Deutsche Sagcn. 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. 175 

swan, Lohengrin steps into it, and disappears from the haunts 
of men. We have already seen, how through the Valkyruir 
the swan is connected with ideas of death. It remains to 
notice how they are naturally so connected by the beautiful 
legend— myth or fact I do not know-— that the swan sings 
once only in life, namely, when he is leaving it, that his first 
song is his own funeral melody. A much older form of the 
Lohengrin myth is referred to in the opening lines of Beowulf, 
where an ancestor of that hero is said to have been found, a 
little child, lying asleep in an open boat which had drifted, 
no one knows whence, to the shore of Gothland. 

Death being thus so universally symbolized by the River of 
Death, it is easy to see the origin of the myth that ghosts will 
not cross living water. It meant nothing else than that a 
ghost cannot return again to life. In the dark days which 
followed the overthrow of the Western Empire, when all the 
civilization of its remoter territories had melted away, there 
grew up among the fishermen of Northern Gaul a wild belief 
that the Channel opposite them was the mortal river, and that 
the shores of this island were the asylum of dark ghosts. 
The myth went, that in the villages of the Gaulish coast the 
fishermen were summoned by rotation to perform the dreadful 
task of ferrying over the departed spirits. At night a knock- 
ing was heard on their doors, a signal of their duties, and when 
they approached the beach they saw boats lying deep in the 
water as though heavily freighted, but yet to their eyes empty. 
Each stepping in, took his rudder, and then by an unfelt wind 
the boat was wafted in one night across a distance which, 
rowing and sailing, they could ordinarily scarcely compass in 
eight. Arrived at the opposite shore (our coast), they heard 
names called over and voices answering as if by rota, and they 
felt their boats becoming light. Then when all the ghosts 
had landed they were wafted back to Gaul. 1 

Among underground-sleepers, who reproduce the second 
image of death, the most celebrated are Kaisar Karl 
in the Unterberg — the under-hill, or hill leading to the 
under world ; or, as another legend goes, in the Niirnberg, 

1 This myth is related by Procopius {£. G. iv.). I have no doubt that 
this island, which he calls Brittia (and of course distinguished from Britan- 
nia), is really identical with it. The wall which he speaks of as dividing 
it is proof sufficient 



176 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

which is really the Niedera-berg, the down-leading hill ; and 
Frederick Red-Beard sleeping in like manner at Kaiserslautem, 

or under tlie Rabenspurg (raven's hill). Deep below the earth 
he sits, his knights around him, their armour on, the horses 
harnessed in the stable ready to come forth at Germany's hour 
of need. His long red beard has grown through the table on 
which his head is resting. Once, it is said, a shepherd chanced 
upon the cave which lends down to the under ground palace 
and awoke the Emperor from his slumber. "Are the ravens 
still Hying round the hill?" asked Frederick. "Yes." 
•■ Then must I sleep another hundred years " 

There are two forms of allusion to the old heathen custom 
of tire-burial. One is by the direct mention of a tire - a circle 
of fire, probably, through which the Knight must ride ; the 
second is by putting in place of the fire the thorn which was the 
invariable concomitant of the funeral pile. A thorn-bush having 
been employed as the foundation of the fire, a thorn becomes 
a symbol of the funeral, and so of death. 1 Hence the constant 
stories of the Sleep-thorn. In the tale of Sigurd the Volsung 
both these symbols are used ; when Sigurd first finds Brynhild 
she has been pricked by Odin with a sleep-thorn, in revenge, 
because she took part against his favourite Hialmgunnar ; for 
she was a Valkyria. Sigurd awakes her. At another time he 
rides to her through a circle of fire which she has set round her 
house, and which no other man dared face. In the myth of 
Sigurd, twice as it were riding through death to Brynhild, we 
see first of all a nature-myth precisely of the same kind as 
the myth of Freyr and Gerda (p. 143), 2 precisely the reverse 
of the myth of Persephone. Brynhild is the dead earth 
restored by the kiss of the sun, or of summer. Afterwards 
the part of Brynhild is taken by the Sleeping Beauty, and 
Sigurd becomes the prince who breaks through the thorn- 
hedge. Observe one thing in the last story. The prick from 
the sleep-thorn becomes a prick from a spinning-wheel, and 
thus loses all its original meaning, while the circle of fire is 

1 See Grimm's Essay, Ueber das Verb, der Leichen, for the proof of this 
fact. 

* The fortune which accompanies a myth is very curious. That of Freyr 
and Gerda is by no means conspicuous in the Edda. and I should not have 
been justified in comparingit in importance with the Persephone myth, but. 
that precisely the same story forms a leading feature in the great Norse and 
Teuton epic, the Volsungand Nibelung songs. 



MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK TALES. 177 

transformed into a thorn-hedge, proof sufficient that they 
were convertible ideas. Lastly, it remains to say, that the 
stories of glass mountains ascended by knights are probably 
allegories of death — heaven being spoken of to this day bv 
Russian and German peasants as a glass mountain — and 
perhaps the glass slipper of Cinderella is so too. 



CHAPTER XII. 



PICTURE-WRITING. 



Though it is true, as we have said before, that every manu- 
factured article involves a long chapter of unwritten history 
to account for its present form, and the perfection of the 
material from which it is wrought, there is no one of them, 
not the most artistic, that will so well repay an effort to hunt 
it through its metamorphoses in the ages to its first starting- 
point, as will the letters that rapidly drop from our pen when 
we proceed to write its name. Each one of these is a manu- 
factured article at which a long, long series of unknown artists 
have wrought, expanding, contracting, shaping, pruning, till 
at length, the result of centuries of effort, our alphabet stands 
clear — a little army of mute, unpretending signs, that are at 
once the least considered of our inherited riches — mere 
jots and tittles — and the spells by which all our great 
feats of genius are called into being. Does unwritten 
history or tradition tell us anything of the people to whose 
invention we owe them, or, on the other hand, can we per- 
suade the little shapes with which we are familiar to so 
animate themselves, and give such an account of the stages 
by which they grew into their present likeness, as will help 
us to understand better than we did before the mental and 
social conditions of the times of their birth 1 One question 
at least they answer clearly ; we know that while in their 
earliest forms they must have preceded the birth of History, 
they were the forerunners and heralds of his appearance, and if 
we are obliged to relegate their invention to the dark period 



PICTURE-WRITING. 179 

of unrecorded events, we must place it at least in the last of the 
twilight hours, the one that preceded daybreak, for they come 
leading sunlight and certainty behind them. It will be hard 
if these revealers of other births should prove to be entirely 
silent about their own. Another point seems to grow clear as 
we think. As letters are the elements by which records come 
to us, it is not in records, or at least not in early records, that 
we must look for a history of their invention. Like all other 
tools, they will have lent themselves silently to the ends for 
which they were called into being. For a long long time, they 
will have been too busy giving the histories of their employers 
to tell us consciously anything about themselves. We must 
leave the substance of records then, and look to their manner 
and form, if we would unravel the long story of the invention 
and growth of our alphabet ; and as it is easiest to begin with 
the thing that is nearest to us, let us pause before one of our 
written words, and ask ourselves exactly what it is to us. 

In tracing the growth of language, we have learned that 
words were at first descriptive of the things they named, in fact, 
pictures to the ear. "What then is a written word 1 Is it too. 
a picture, and what does it picture, to the eye 1 When we 
have written the words cat, man, lion, what have we done 1 
We have brought the images of certain things into our minds, 
and that by a form presented to the eye ; but is it the form 
of the object we immediately think of 1 No, it is the form of 
its name ; it is therefore the picture of a sound. To picture 
sound is, surely, a very far-fetched notion, one that may 
have grown out of many previous efforts to convey 
thought from mind to mind ; but certainly not likely to 
occur first to those who began the attempt to give permanent 
shape to the thoughts floating within them. So great and 
difficult a task must have baffled the powers of many enter- 
prisers, and been approached in many ways before the first 
steps towards accomplishing it were securely taken. We shall 
find that the history of our alphabet is a record of slow stages 
of growth, through which the idea of sound- writing has been 
evolved ; the first attempts to record events were made in a 
different direction. Since, as we have agreed, we are not 
likely to find a record of how events were first recorded, and 
as the earliest attempts are likely to have been imperfect and 
little durable, we must be content to form our notions of the 
earliest stage in our grand invention, by observing the methods 

n 2 



180 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

used by savages now, to aid their memories ; and if we wish to 
determine the period in the history of the human race when 
such efforts are likely to have been first made, we must recall 
what we have already learned of the histcry of primitive man, 
and .settle at what stage of his development the need for arti- 
ficial aids to memory would first press upon him. Stories and 
poetry are not likely to have been the first things written 
down. While communities were small and young, there was 
no need to write painfully what it was so delightful to repeat 
from mouth to mouth, and so easy for memories to retain ; and 
when the stock of tradition and the treasure of song grew so 
large in any tribe as to exceed the capacity of ordinary 
memories (greater before the invention of writing, let us re- 
member, than now), men with unusual gifts would be chosen 
and set apart for the purposes' of remembering and reciting, 
and of handing down to disciples in the next generation, the 
precious literature of the tribe. Such an order of remem- 
berers would soon come to be looked upon as sacred, or at 
least highly honourable, and would have privileges and im- 
munities bestowed on them which would make them jealous 
of an invention that would lessen the worth of their special 
gift. The invention of writing, then, is hardly likely to have 
come from the story-tellers or bards. It was probably to aid 
the memory in recalling something less attractive and more 
secret than a story or a song that the first record was made. 

So early as the time of the cave-dwellers, there was a 
beginning of commerce. Traces have been found of work- 
shops belonging to that period, where flint weapons and tools 
were made in such quantities as evidently to have been 
designed for purposes of barter, and the presence of amber 
and shells in places far from the coast, speaks of trading 
journeys. "With bargains and exchange of commodities, aids 
to memory must surely have come in ; and when we think of 
the men of the Neolithic age as traders, we can hardly be 
wrong in also believing them to have taken the next step in 
civilization which trade seems to bring with it — the invention, 
of some system of mnemonics. 

No man or woman would be likely to trust their bargain- 
ing to another without giving him some little token or pledge 
by way of safeguard against mistake or forgetfulness. It 
would be a very trifling, transitory thing at first ; something 
in the nature of a tally, or a succession of knots or woven 



PICTUKE- WTJTIXG . 181 

threads in a garment, allied to the knot which w.e tie on our 
handkerchief over night to make us remember something in 
the morning. It seems hardly worthy of notice, and yet tho 
invention of that artificial aid to memory is the germ of writ- 
ing, the little seed from which such great things have come. 
Unfortunately our discoveries of stone-age relics have not 
yet furnished us with any helps to understand how the ancient 
men managed and carried out the aids to memory they must 
have had ; but we can trace the process of invention among 
still extant races, who keep pretty closely to first methods. 
Some tribes of Red Indians keep records on cords called 
wampum, by means of beads and knots, and when an embassy 
is sent from one chieftain to another, the principal speaker 
carries one of these pieces of wampum, and from it reads off 
the articles of the proposed treaty, almost as easily as if it 
were from a note -book. 

In the Eastern Archipelago, and in Polynesia proper, 
these cord-records were in use forty years ago, and by 
means of them the tax-gatherers in the Island of Hawaii 
kept clear accounts of all articles collected from the inhabi- 
tants of the island. The revenue book of Hawaii was a 
rope 400 fathoms long, divided into portions corresponding 
to districts in the island, and each portion was under the care 
of a tax-gatherer, who by means of knots, loops, and tufts of 
different shapes, colours, and sizes, managed to keep an 
accurate account of the number of hogs, dogs, pieces of sandal- 
wood, ifcc, at which each inhabitant of his district was rated. 
The Chinese have a legend that in very early times their people 
used little cords marked by knots of different sizes, instead 
of writing ; but the people who brought the cord system of 
mnemonics to the greatest perfection were the Peruvians. 
They were still following it at the time of their conquest by 
the Spaniards ; but they had elaborated it with such care as to 
make it available for the preservation of even minute details 
of the statistics of the country. The ropes on which they 
kept their records were called quipus, from quipu, a knot. 
They were often of great length and thickness, and from the 
main ropes depended smaller ones, distinguished by colours 
appropriate to subjects of which their knots treated — as, 
white for silver, yellow for gold, red for soldiers, green for 
corn, parti -coloured when a subject that required division was 
treated of. These dependent coloured strings had again other 



182 THE DAWN OP HISTORY. 

little strings hanging from them, and on these exceptions were 
noted. For instance, on the quipus devoted to population — 
the coloured strings on which the number of men in each 
town and village was recorded had depending from them 
little strings for the widowers, and no doubt the widows and 
the old maids had their little strings from the coloured cord 
that denoted women. One knot meant ten ; a double knot, 
one hundred ; two singles, side by side, twenty ; two doubles, 
two hundred ; and the position of the knots on their string 
and their form were also of immense importance, each subject 
having its proper place on the quipus and its proper form of 
knot. The art of learning to read quipus must have 
been difficult to acquire ; it was practised by special func- 
tionaries, called quipucamayocuna, or knot-officers, who, 
however, seem only to have been able to expound their own 
records ; for when a quipus was sent from a distant province to 
the capital, its own guardian had to travel with it to explain 
it. (A clumsy and cumbrous way of sending a letter, was it 
not V) Knot-records were almost everywhere superseded by 
other methods of recording events as civilization advanced ; 
but still they continued to be resorted to under special cir- 
cumstances, and by people who had not the pens of ready 
writers. Darius made a quipus when he took a thong, and 
tying sixty knots on it, gave it to the Ionian chiefs, that they 
might untie a knot every day, and go back to their own land 
if he had not returned when all the knots were undone, and 
the Scythians who, about the same time, sent a message to 
Darius, afford us an example of another way of attaching 
meaning to things, and so using them as aids to memory, — 
writing letters with objects instead of pen and ink, in fact. 
Here, however, symbolism comes in, and makes the mnemonics 
at once prettier and less trustworthy as capable of more than 
one interpretation. The Scythian ambassadors presented 
Darius (as Herodotus tells us) with a mouse, a bird, a frog, 
and an arrow, and the message with which they had been en- 
trusted was that, unless he could hide in the earth like a 
mouse, or fly in the air like a bird, or swim in water like a 
frog, he would never escape the arrows of the Scythians. 

Such, too, was the bow, too heavy for an ordinary man to 
bend, which the long-lived Ethiopians sent to Cambyses ; and 
the twelve memorial stones which Joshua was directed to 
place in the river Jordan, in order that the sons might ask 



PICTURE-WRITING. 183 

the fathers, and the fathers tell the sons what had happened 
in that place ; and again such were the yokes and bonds which 
Jeremiah put round his neck when he testified against the 
alliance with Egypt before Zedekiah, and the earthen pot that 
he broke in the presence of the elders of the people. Signs 
joined with words and actions to convey a fuller or more exact 
meaning than words alone could convey. Perhaps, however, 
we ought hardly to call these last examples helps to memory ; 
they partake more of the nature of pictures, and were used 
to heighten the effect of words. We may perhaps regard 
them as a connecting link between the merely mechanical 
tally, wampum and quipus, and the effort to record ideas we 
must now consider — picturing. It must, however, always be 
borne in mind that, though we shall speak of these various 
methods of making records as stages of progress and develop- 
ment, it is not to be supposed that the later ones immediately, 
or indeed ever wholly, superseded the first any more than the 
introduction of bronze and iron did away with the use of flint 
weapons. The one method subsisted side by side with the 
other, and survived to quite late times, as we see in such 
usages as the bearing forth of the fiery cross to summon 
clansmen to the banner of their chieftain, and the casting 
down of the knight's glove as a gage of battle, or, to come 
down to homely modern instances, the tallies and knots on 
handkerchiefs that unready writers carry to help their 
memories even now. 

Helps to memory of all kinds never get beyond being helps. 
They cannot carry thought from one to another without the 
intervention of an interpreter, in whose memory they keep 
fast the words that have to be said • they localize tradition, 
but they cannot change tradition into history, and are always 
liable to become useless by the death of the man, or order of 
men, to whom they have been entrusted. 

A more independent and lasting method of recording events 
was sure to be aimed at sooner or later ; and we may conjec- 
ture that it usually took its rise among a people at the period 
when their national pride was so developed as to make them 
anxious that the deeds of some conspicuous hero should be 
made known, not only to those interested in telling and hearing 
of them, but to strangers visiting their country, and to remote 
descendants. Their first effort to record an event, so as to 
make it widely known, would naturally be to draw a picture 



184 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

of it, such as all seeing the picture would understand ; and 
accordingly we find that the earliest step beyond artificial 
helps to memory is the making of rude pictures which aim at 
showing a deed or event as it occurred without suggesting the 
words of a narrative; this is called "picturing" as distin- 
guished from picture-writing. That this, too, was a very early 
art we may feel sure from the fact that rude pictures of 
animals have been found among the relics of the earliest stone 
age. We are not perhaps justified in conjecturing that the 
pictures actually found are rough memorials of some real 
hunting scene, but we learn from them that the thought of 
depicting objects had come, and the skill to produce a likeness 
been attained to, and the idea of using this power to transmit 
events lies so near to its possession, that we can hardly believe 
one to have been long present without the other. To enable 
ourselves to imagine the sort of picture-records with which 
the stone-age men may have ornamented some of their knives, 
spears, and hammers, we must examine the doings of people 
who have continued in the same stage of civilization down to 
historic times. 

Some curious pictures done by North American Indians 
have been found on rocks and stones, and on the stems of 
pine trees in America, which furnish excellent examples of early 
picturing. Mr. Tylor, in his Early History of Mankind, gives 
engravings of several of these shadowy records of long-past 
events. One of these, which was found on the smoothed sur- 
face of a pine-tree, consists merely of a rude outline of two 
canoes, one surmounted by a bear with a peculiar tail and the 
other by a fish, and beyond these a quantity of shapes meant 
for a particular kind of fish. The entire picture records the 
successes of two chieftains named Copper-tail Bear and Cat- 
fish, in a fishing excursion. Another picture found on the 
surface of a rock near Lake Superior is more elaborate, and 
interests us by showing a new element in picturing, through 
which it was destined to grow into its next stage. This more 
elaborate picture shows an arch with three suns in it — a tor- 
toise, a man about to mount a horse, and several canoes, one 
surmounted by the image of a bird. All this tells that the 
chief King-fisher made an expedition of three days across a 
lake, and arriving safely on land, mounted his horse. The new 
element introduced into this picture is symbolism, the same 
that transformed the homely system of tallies into the 



PICTUEIMVKITIXG. 185 

Scythian's graceful living message to Darius. It shows the 
excess of thought over the power of expression, which will 
soon necessitate a new form. The tortoise is used as a symbol 
of dry land. The arch is, of course, the sky, and the three 
suns in it mean three days. The artist who devised these 
ways of expressing his thought was on the edge of picture- 
writing, which is the next stage in the upward progress of the 
art of recording events, and the stage at which some nations 
have terminated their efforts. 

Picture-writing differs from picturing in that it aims to 
convey to the mind, not a representation of an event, but a 
narrative of the event in words, each word being pictured. 
The distinction is important, for the change from one system 
to the other involves an immense progress in the art of per- 
petuating thought. Let us take a sentence and see how it 
might be conveyed by the two methods. A man slew a lion 
with a how and arrows while the sun ivent down. Picturing 
would show the man with a drawn bow in his hand, the lion 
struck by the arrow, the sun on the horizon. Picture-writing 
would present a series of little pictures and symbols dealing 
separately with each word — a man, a symbol for slew, say 
a hand smiting, a lion, a connecting symbol for " with," 
and so on. "We see at once how much more elaborate and 
exact the second method is, and that it makes the telling of 
a continuous story possible. We also discover that these various 
stages of writing correspond to developments of language, and 
that as languages grow in capacity to express nobler thoughts, 
a greater stress would be put upon invention to render the 
more recondite words by pictures and symbols, till at last 
language will outgrow all possibility of being so rendered, and 
another method of showing words to the eye will have to be 
thought cf — for all languages at least that attain their full 
development. That a great deal may be expressed by pictures 
and symbols, however, we learn from the picturing and picture- 
writing of past races that have come down to us, and from 
the present writing of the Chinese, who with their radical 
language have preserved the pictorial character that well 
accords with an early stage of language. 

The Red Indians of North America have invented some 
very ingenious methods of picturing time and numbers. They 
have names for the thirteen moons or months into which they 
divide the year — Whirlwind moon, moon when the leaves fall 



186 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

off, moon when the fowls go to the south, etc., and when a 
hunter setting forth on a long expedition wished to leave a 
record of the time of his departure for a friend who should 
follow him on the same track, he carved on the bark of a tree 
a picture of the name of the moon, accompanied with such an 
exact representation of the state of the moon in the heavens 
on the night when he set out, that his friends had no difficulty 
in reading the date correctly. The Indians of Virginia kept 
a record of events in the form of a series of wheels of sixty 
spokes, each wheel representing the life of a man, sixty years 
being the average life of a man among the Indians. The 
spokes meant years, and on each one a picture of the 
principal occurrences of the year was drawn. 

A missionary who accompanied Penn to Pennsylvania says 
that he saw a wheel, on one spoke of which the first arrival of 
Europeans in America was recorded. The history of this dis- 
astrous event for the Indians was given by a picture of a white 
swan spitting fire from its mouth. The swan, being a water- 
bird, told that the strangers came over the sea, its white plu- 
mage recalled the colour of their faces, and fire issuing from 
its mouth represented fire-arms, the possession of which had 
made them conquerors. The North American Indians also use 
rude little pictures, rough writing we may call it, to help them 
to remember songs and charms. Each verse of a song is con- 
centrated into a little picture, the sight of which recalls the 
words to one who has once learned it. A drawing of a little 
man, with four marks on his legs and two on his breast, recalls 
the adverse charm, " Two days must you fast, my friend, four 
days must you sit still." A picture of a circle with a figure 
in the middle represents a verse of a love-song, and says to 
the initiated, " Were she on a distant island I could make her 
swim over." This sort of picturing seems to be very near 
writing, for it serves to recall words — but still only to recall 
them — it would not suggest the words to those who had never 
heard the song before ; it is only an aid to memory, and its 
employers have only as yet taken the first step in the great 
discovery we are talking about. The Mexicans, though they 
had attained to much greater skill than this in the drawing 
and colouring of pictures, had not progressed much further in 
the invention. Their picture-scrolls do not seem ever to have 
been more than an elaborate system of mnemonics, which, 
hardly less than the Peruvian quipus, required a race of inter- 



PICTURE-WRITING. 187 

preters to hand down their meaning from one generation to 
another. This fact makes ns regret somewhat less keenly the 
decision of the first Spanish archbishop sent to Mexico, who, 
on being informed of the great store of vellum rolls, and 
folds on folds of cloth covered with paintings, that had been 
discovered at Anahuac, the chief seat of Mexican learning, 
ordered the entire collection to be burnt in a heap ; a moun- 
tain heap, the chroniclers of the time call it — lest they should 
contain incantations or instructions for the practice of magical 
arts. As some excuse for this notion of the archbishop's we 
will mention the subjects treated of in the five books of 
picture-writing which Montezuma gave to Cortez : — the first 
book treated of years and seasons ; the second of days and festi- 
vals ; the third of dreams and' omens ; the fourth of the naming 
of children ; the fifth of ceremonies and prognostications. 

The few specimens of Mexican writing which have come 
down to us, show that, though the Toltecs had not used their 
picture signs as skilfully as some other nations have done, 
they had taken the first step towards phonetic, or sound- 
writing; a step which, if pursued, would have led them 
through some such process as we shall afterwards see was 
followed by the Egyptians and Phoenicians, to the formation 
of a true alphabet. They had begun to write proper names 
of chiefs and towns by pictures of things that recalled the 
somid of their names, instead of by a symbol suggestive of the 
appearance or quality of the place or chieftain, or of the 
meaning of the names. It is difficult to explain this without 
pictures ; but as this change of method involves a most im- 
portant step in the discovery of the art of writing, we had 
better pause upon it a little, and get it clear to our minds. 
There was a king whose name occurs in a chronicle now exist- 
ing, called Itz-co-atle, Knife-snake; his name is generally 
written by a picture of a snake, with flint knives stuck in it ; 
but in one place it is indicated in a different manner. The 
first syllable is still pictured by a knife ; but for the second, 
instead of a snake, we find an earthen pot and a sign for 
water. Now the Mexican name for pot is " co-mitle," for 
water " atle ; " read literally the name thus pictured would 
read " Itz-comitle-atle ; " but it is clear, since the name 
intended was "Itz-co-atle," that the pot is drawn to 
suggest only the first syllable of its name, co, and by 
this change it has become no longer a picture, but a 



188 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

phonetic, syllabic sign, the next step but one before a true 
letter What great results can be elaborated from this 
change you will see when we begin to speak of Egyptian 
writing. 

We must not leave picture-writing till we have said some- 
thing about the Chinese character, in which we find the 
highest development of which direct representation of things 
appears capable. Though we should not think it, while looking 
at the characters on a Chinese tea-paper or box, every one of 
those groups of black strokes and dots which seem so shapeless 
to our eyes is a picture of an object ; not a picture of the 
sound of its name, as our written words are, but a representa- 
tion real or symbolic of the thing itself. Early specimens of 
Chinese writing show these groups of strokes in a stage when 
a greater degree of resemblance to the thing signified is pre- 
served ; but the exigencies of quick writing, among a people 
who write and read a great deal, have gradually reduced the 
pictures more and more to the condition of arbitrary signs, 
whose connection with the things signified must be a matter 
of habit and memory. The task of learning a sign for every 
word of the language in place of conquering the art of spelling 
does seem, at first sight, to put Chinese children in a pitiable 
condition as compared with ourselves. To lessen our com- 
passion, we may recall that the Chinese language is still in the 
root stage (having been checked in its growth in fact by a too 
early invention of these same picture-signs), and that con- 
sequently it comprehends comparatively few sounds, the same 
sound being used to express meanings by a difference in in- 
tonation. This difference could not easily be given in writing ; 
it is therefore almost a necessity to recall the thing itself to 
the mind instead of its name. 

Pictorial signs are used in several different ways, some- 
times as real pictures, sometimes as ideographs, which again 
may be divided into groups as they are used — metaphorically, 
as a bee for industry ; enigmatically, as among the Egyptians, 
an ostrich feather is used as a Symbol of justice, because all 
the plumes in the wing of this bird were supposed to be of 
equal length ; by syncloche, putting a part for the whole ; as 
two eyeballs for eyes ; by metonomy, putting cause for effect ; 
as a tree for shadow ; the disk of the sun for a day, iV:c. 
This system of writing in pictures and symbols requires so 
much ingenuity, such hosts of pretty poetic inventions, that 



PICTURE-WRITING. 189 

perhaps there is less dulness than would at first appear in 
getting the Chinese alphabet of some ten thousand signs or so 
by heart. "We will mention a few Chinese ideographs in 
illustration. The sign for a man placed over the sign for a 
mountain-peak signifies a hermit ; the sign for a mouth and 
that for a bird placed side by side signify the act of singing ; 
a hand holding a sweeping- brush is a woman ; a man seated 
on the ground, a son (showing the respectful position assigned 
to children in China); an ear at the opening of a door 
means curiosity ; two eyes squinting towards the nose mean 
to observe carefully ; one eye squinting symbolises the colour 
white, because so much of the white of the eye is shown when 
the ball is in that position ; a mouth at an open door is a note 
of interrogation, and also the verb to question. 

Even Chinese writing, however, has not remained purely 
ideographic. Some of the signs are used phonetically to 
picture sound, and this use must necessarily grow now that 
intercourse with Western nations introduces new names, new 
inventions and new ideas, which, somehow or other, must get 
themselves represented in the Chinese language and writing. 

The invention of determinative signs — characters put be- 
side the word to show what class of objects a word belongs 
to — helps the Chinese to overcome some of the difficulties 
which their radical language offers to the introduction of 
sound-writing. For example, the word Pa has eight different 
meanings, and when it is written phonetically, a reader would 
have to choose between eight objects to which he might apply 
it, if there were not a determinative sign by its side which 
gives him a hint how to read it. This is as if when we wrote 
the word vessel we were to add " navigation " when we 
intended a ship ; and "household " when we meant a jug or 
puncheon. The Chinese determinative signs are not, however, 
left to each writer's fancy. Two hundred and fourteen signs 
(originally themselves pictures, remember) have been chosen 
out, and are always used in this way. The classes into which 
objects are divided by these numerous signs are minute, and 
do not appear to follow any scientific method or arrangement. 
There is a sign to show that a written word belongs 
to the class noses, another for rats, another for frogs, 
another for tortoises. One is inclined to think that the 
helpful signs must be as hard to remember as the words 
themselves, and that they can only be another element 



190 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

in the general confusion. Probably their frequent recur- 
rence makes them soon become familiar to Chinese readers 
and they act as finger-posts to guide the thoughts into 
the right direction. Determinative signs have always 
come in to help in the transitional stage between purely 
ideographic and purely phonetic writing, and were used by 
both Egyptians and Assyrians in their elaborate systems as 
soon as the phonetic principle began to be employed among 
their ideographs. 

It is an interesting fact that the Japanese have dealt with 
the Chinese system of writing precisely as did the Phoenicians 
with the Egyptian hieroglyphics. They have chosen forty- 
seven signs from the ten thousand employed by the Chinese, 
and they use them phonetically only ; that is to say, as true 
sound-carrying letters. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



P H O N E T TC WRITING. 



We have now to trace the process through which picture- 
writing passed into sound-writing, and to find out how signs 
(for we shall see they are the same signs) which were origin- 
ally meant to recall objects to the eye, have ended in being 
used to suggest, or, shall we say, "picture, sounds to the ear. A 
written word, let us remember, is the picture of a sound, and 
it is our business to hunt the letters of which it is formed 
through the changes they must have undergone while they 
were taking upon themselves the new office of suggesting 
sound. We said too that we must not expect to find any 
written account of this change, and that it is only by 
examining the forms of the records of other events that this 
greatest event of literature can be made out. What we want 
is to see the signs, while busy in telling us other history, 
beginning to perform their new duties side by side with the 
old, so that we may be sure of their identity ; and this oppor- 
tunity is afforded us by the hieroglyphic writing of the ancient 
Egyptians, who, being people disposed to cling to everything 
that had once been done, never altogether left off employing 
their first methods, even after they had taken another and 
yet another step towards a more perfect system of writing, 
but carried on the old ways and the new improvements side 
by side. The nature of their language, which was in part 
radical and in part inflexional, was one cause of this inter- 
mixture of methods in their writing ; it had partly but not 
entirely outgrown the stage in which picture-signs are most 



192 THE 1M.WN OF HISTORY. 

useful. Ideograph is the proper name for a picture -sign, 
which, as soon as picture-writing supersedes picturing, becomes 
the sign for a thought quite as often as it is the sign for an 
object. Very ancient as are the earliest Egyptian records, we 
have none which belong to the time when the invention of 
writing was in the stage of picturing : we only conjecture 
that it passed through this earliest stage by finding examples 
of picturing mixed with their other kinds of writing. Each 
chapter of the Ritual, the oldest of Egyptian books, has one 
or more designs at its head, in which the contents of the 
chapter are very carefully and ingeniously pictured, and the 
records of royal triumphs and progresses which are cut out 
on temple and palace walls in ideographic and phonetic 
signs, are always prefaced t>y a large picture which tells 
the same story in the primitive method of picturing without 
words. 

The next stage of the invention, ideographic writing, the 
ancient Egyptians carried to great perfection, and reduced to 
a careful system. The signs for ideas became fixed, and were 
not chosen according to each writer's fancy. Every picture 
had its settled value, and was always used in the same way. 
A sort of alphabet of ideographs was thus formed. A heart 
drawn in a certain way always meant "love," an eye with a 
tear on the lash meant "grief," two hands holding a shield 
and spear meant the verb "to fight," a tongue meant "to 
speak," a foot-print "to travel," a man kneeling on the 
ground signified "a conquered enemy," &c. Conjunctions 
and prepositions had their fixed pictures, as well as verbs and 
nouns ; "also " was: pictured by a coil of rope with a second 
band across it, " and " by a coil of rope with an arm across 
it, "over" by a circle surmounting a square, "at" by the 
picture of a hart reposing near the sign for water — a signifi- 
cant picture for such a little word, which recalls to our 
minds, "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks," and 
leads us to wonder whether the writer of the Psalm were not 
familiar with the Egyptian hieroglyph. 

So much was done in this way, we almost wonder that the 
need for another method came to be felt ; perhaps a peculiarity 
of the Egyptian language helped the splendid thought of 
picturing sound to flash one happy day into the mind of some 
priest, when he was laboriously cutting his sacred sentence 
into a temple wall. The language of ancient Egypt, like 



PHONETIC WRITING. 193 

that of China (being, as we said before, in part a radical 
language), had a great many words alike in sound but different 
in meaning, and it could not fail to happen that some of these 
words with two meanings would indicate a thing easy to draw, 
and a thought difficult to symbolise ; for example, the ancient 
Egyptian word neb means a basket and a ruler ; and no/re 
means a lute and goodness. There would come a day when a 
clever priest, cutting a record on a wall, would bethink him 
of putting a lute instead of the more elaborate symbol that 
had hitherto been used for goodness. It was a simple change, 
and might not have struck anyone at the time as involving 
more than the saving of a little trouble to hieroglyphists, but 
it was the germ out of which our system of writing sprang. 
The priest who did that had taken the first step towards 
picturing sound, and cut a true phonetic sign — the true if 
remote parent indeed of one of our own twenty-four letters 
of the alphabet. Let us consider how the thought would 
probably grow. The writers once started on the road of 
making signs stand for sounds would observe how much fewer 
sounds there are than objects and ideas, and that words even 
when unlike are composed of the same sounds pronounced in 
different succession. If we were employed in painting up a 
notice on a wall, and intended to use ideographs instead of 
letters, and moreover if the words manage, mansion, manly, 
mantles, came into our sentence, should we not begin each 
of these words by a figure of a man? and again, if we had to 
write treacle, treason, treaty, we should begin each with a 
picture of a tree ; we should find it easier to use the same 
sign often for part of a word, than to invent a fresh symbol 
for each entire word as we wrote it. For the remaining 
syllables of the words we had so successfully begun we should 
have to invent other signs, and we should perhaps soon dis- 
cover that in each syllable there were in fact several sounds, 
or movements of lips or tongue, and that the same sounds 
differently combined came over and over again in all our 
words. Then we might go on to discover exactly how many 
movements of the speaking organs occurred in ordinary 
speech, and the thought of choosiug a particular picture to 
represent each movement might occur ; we should then have 
invented an alphabet in its early stage of development. That 
was the road along which the ancient Egyptians travelled, but 
they progressed very slowly, and never quite reached its end. 

o 



194 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

They began by having syllabic signs fox* proper names. 
Osiri was a name that occurred frequently in their sacred 
writings, and they happened to have two words in their 
language which made up its sound. Os a throne, iri an eye. 
Hence a small picture of a throne came to be the syllabic 
sign for the sound ox, the oval of an eye for the sound iri ; 
in like manner Totro, the name of an early king, was written 
by a hand Tot and a circle lio, and thus a system of spelling 
by syllables was established. Later they began to divide 
syllables into movements of the speaking organs, and to 
represent these movements by drawing objects whose name 
began with the movement intended. For example, a picture 
of a lion (labo) was drawn not for the whole sound (labo) but 
for the liquid I ; an owl (mulag) stood for the labial m ; a water- 
jug (nem) for n. They had now in fact invented letters, but 
though they had made the great discovery they did not use it 
in the best way. They could not make up their minds to keep 
to phonetic writing, and throw away their pictures and ideo- 
graphs. They continued to mix all these methods together, 
so that when they painted a lion — it might be a picture and 
mean I' on, it might be a symbolic sign and mean pre- 
eminence, or it might be a true letter and stand for the liquid 
/. The Egyptians were obliged to invent a whole army of 
determinative signs, like those now employed by the Chinese, 
which they placed before their pictures to show when a group 
was to be read according to its sound, when it was used 
symbolically, and when it was a simple representation of the 
object intended. 

Another source of difficulty in deciphering the writing of 
the ancient Egyptians, is that they were not content with 
a single sign for a single sound, they had a great many 
different pictures for each letter, and used them in fanciful 
methods : for example, if I occurred in the name of a king, 
or god, they would use the lion picture to express it, 
thinking it appropriate ; but if the same sound occurred in 
the name of a queen, they would use a lotus-lily as more 
feminine and elegant. They had as many as twenty different 
pictures which could be used for the first letter of our alphabet 
a, and thirty for the letter h, one of which closely resembles 
our capital H in form, being two upright palm-branches held 
by two arms which make the cross of the H. No letter had 
fewer than five pictures to express its sound, from which the 



niONETIC WRITING. 195 

writer might choose according to his fancy j or perhaps, 
sometimes, according to the space he had to fill up on the 
wall, or obelisk, where he was writing, and the effect in 
form and colour he wished his sentence to produce. Then 
again, all their letters were not quite true letters (single 
breathings). The Egyptians never got quite clear about 
vowels and consonants, and generally spelt words (unless 
they began with a vowel sound) by consonants only, the 
consonants carrying a vowel breathing as well as their 
own sound, and thus being syllabic signs instead of true 
letters. 

Since much of the writing of the ancient Egyptians was 
used ornamentally as decoration for the walls of their houses 
and temples, and took with them the place of the tapestry 
of later times, the space required to carry out their complex 
system of writing was no objection to it in their eyes ; neither 
did they care much about the difficulty of learning so elaborate 
an array of signs, as for many centuries the art of reading 
and writing was almost entirely confined to an order of priests 
whose occupation and glory it was. "When writing became 
more common, and was used for ordinary as well as sacred 
purposes, the pictorial element disappeared from some of their 
styles of writing, and quick ways of making the pictures 
were invented, which reduced them to as completely arbitrary 
signs, with no resemblance to the objects intended, as the 
Chinese signs now are. 

The ancient Egyptians had two ways of quick writing, the 
Hieratic (used by a priest), which was employed for the sacred 
writings only, and the Demotic used by the people, which was 
employed for law-papers, letters, and all writing that did not 
touch on religious matters or enter into the province of the 
priest. Yet, though literature increased and writing was 
much practised by people engaged in the ordinary business of 
life (we see pictures on the tombs of the great man's upper 
servant seated before his desk and recording with reed-pen 
and ink-horn the numbers of the flocks and herds belonging 
to the farm), little was done to simplify the art of writing by 
the ancient Egyptians. Down to the latest times when 
Hieroglyphics were cut, and Demotic and Hieratic characters 
written, the same confusing variety of signs were employed — ■ 
pictorial, ideographic, symbolic, phonetic — all mixed up to- 
gether, with nothing to distinguish them but the determinative 

o 2 



196 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

signs before spoken of, which themselves added a new element 
to the complexity. 

It was left for a less conservative and more enter- 
prising people than the ancient Egyptians to take the last 
and greatest step in perfecting the invention which the 
ancient Egyptians had brought so far on its road, and by 
throwing away all the first attempts, allow the serviceable, 
successful parts of the system to stand out clear. The 
Phienicians, to whom tradition points as the introducers of 
our alphabet into Europe, and who, during early ages, were 
in very close political and trading connection with the ancient 
Egyptians, are now believed to be the authors of the improve- 
ment by which we benefit. They did not invent the alphabet 
which the Greeks learned from them ; they could have had no 
reason to invent signs, when they must have been well ac- 
quainted with the superabundance that had been in use for 
centuries before they began to build their cities by the sea- 
shore. What they probably did was to choose from the 
Egyptian characters, with which all the traders of the world 
must have been familiar, just so many phonetic or sound - 
carrying signs as represented the sounds of which speech is 
made up ; and rejecting all others, they kept strictly to these 
chosen ones in all their future writings. This was a great 
work to have accomplished, and we must not suppose that it 
was done by one man, or even in one generation • as probably 
it took a very long time to perfect the separation between 
vowels and consonants : a distinction which had already been 
made by the ancient Egyptians, for they had vowel signs, 
though, as before remarked, they constantly made their con- 
sonants carry the vowels, and spelt words with consonants 
alone. You will remember that consonants are the most 
important elements of language, and constitute, as we have 
said before, the bones of words ; but also that distinctions of 
time, person, and case depended in an early stage of language 
on vowels ; and you will therefore understand how important 
to clearness of expression it was to have a clearly defined 
separate sign for the vowels and diphthongs that had, so to 
speak, all the exactitude of meaning in their keeping. The 
Phoenicians, of all the people in the early world, were most in 
need of a clear and precise method of writing : for, being the 
great traders and settlers of ancient times, one of its principal 
uses would be to enable them to communicate with friends 



PHONETIC WRITING. 197 

at a distance by means of writings which should convey 
the thoughts of the absent ones, or tbe private instructions 
of a trader to his partner without need of an interpreter. 

The advantages of simplicity and clearness had been less 
felt by Egyptian priests while inscribing their stately records 
on walls of temples and palaces, and on the tapering sides of 
obelisks which were meant to lift sacred words up to the eye 
of Heaven rather than to expose them to those of men. They 
believed that a race of priests would continue, as long as the 
temples and obelisks continued, who could explain the writing 
to those worthy to enter into its mysteries ; and they were 
not sorry, perhaps, to keep the distinction of understanding 
the art of letters to their own caste. 

It was not till letters were needed by busy people, who 
had other things to do besides studying, that the necessity 
for making them easy to learn, and really effective as carriers 
of thought across distances, was sincerely felt. Two con- 
jectures as to the method pursued by the Phoenicians in 
choosing their letters and adapting them to their own language 
have been made by the learned. One is, that while they took 
the forms of their letters from the Egyptian system of signs, 
and adopted the principle of making each picture of an object 
stand for the first sound of its name, as labo for I ; they did not 
give to each letter the value it had in the Egyptian alphabet, 
but allowed it to mean for them the first sound of its name in 
their own language. Eor example, they took the sign for an 
ox's head and made it stand for the sound a, not because 
it was one of the Egyptian signs for "a," but because Aleph 
was the name for an ox and "a" was its first syllable. This, 
which seems a natural method enough, is, however, not the 
method followed by the Japanese in choosing their alphabet 
from the Chinese signs ; and more recent investigations prove 
such a close resemblance between the earliest forms of 
Phoenician letters, and early forms of signs for the same 
sounds in Hieratic character, that a complete descent in sound- 
bearing power, as well as in form, is now claimed for our 
letters from those hieroglyphics, which, in our ignorance of 
the relationship, we used to consider a syonymous term for 
something unintelligible. The Semitic language spoken by 
the Phoenicians was richer in sounds than the less developed 
language spoken by the ancient Egyptians ; but as the Egyp- 
tians used several signs for each letter, the Phoenicians easily 



IDS THE DAWN OF HISTORY 

fell into the habit of giving a slightly different value to two 
forms originally identical, and thus provided for all the more 
delicate distinctions of their tongue. A close comparison of 
the forms of the letters of the earliest known Canaanite in- 
scriptions with Hieratic writing of the time of the Old 
Empire reveals a resemblance so striking between fifteen of 
the Phoenician letters and Hieratic characters carrying the 
same sounds, that a conviction of the derivation of one from 
the other impresses itself on even a careless observer. The 
correspondence of the other five Canaanite letters with their 
Hieratic counterparts is less obvious to the uneducated eye, 
but experts in such investigations see sufficient likeness even 
there to confirm the theory. 

The gradual divergence of the Phoenician characters from their 
Hieratic parents is easily accounted for by the difference of the 
material and the instrument employed by the Phoenicians and 
Egyptians in writing. The Hieratic character was painted by 
Egyptian priests on smooth papyrus leaves with a brush or broad 
pointed reed- pen. The Canaanite inscriptions are graven with 
a sharp instrument on hard stone, and as a natural consequence 
the round curves of the Hieratic character become sharp points, 
and there is a general simplification of form and a throwing 
aside of useless lines and dots, the last remnants of the 
picture from which each Hieratic character originally sprang. 
The names given later to the Phoenician letters, Aleph, an 
"ox;" Beth, a "house;" Gimel, a "camel;" Daleth, a 
"door;" are not the names of the objects from which the 
forms of these letters were originally taken. The Hieratic 
" A" was taken from the picture of an eagle, which stood for 
" A " in hieroglyphics ; " B " was originally a sort of heron ; 
" D," a hand with the fingers spread out. New names were 
given by the Phoenicians to the forms they had borrowed, 
from fancied resemblances to objects which, in their language, 
began with the sound intended, when the original Egyptian 
names had been forgotten. It is hard for us to see a likeness 
between our letter " A " and an ox's horns with a yoke across; 
or between " B " and the ground-plan of a house ; " G " and 
a camel's head and neck ; " M " and water ; " W " and a set 
of teeth ; " P " and the back of a head set on the neck ; but 
our letters have gone through a great deal of straightening 
and putting into order since they came into Europe and were 
sent out on their further westward travels. The reader who 



PHONETIC WKITING. 199 

has an opportunity of examining early specimens of letters 
on Greek coins will find a freedom of treatment which 
makes them much more suggestive of resemblances, and the 
earlier Phoenician letters were, no doubt, more pictorial still. 
The interesting and important thing to be remembered con- 
cerning our letters is that each one of them was, without 
doubt, a picture once, and gets its shape in no other way than 
by having once stood for an object, whose name in the 
ancient people's language began with the sound it conveys 
to us. 

These Phoenician letters, born on the walls of Egyptian 
tombs older than Abraham, and selected by Phoenician 
traders who took their boats up to Memphis at or before 
Joseph's time, are the parents of all the alphabets now 
used in the world, with the exception of that one which 
the Japanese have taken from Chinese picture-writing. The 
Phoenicians carried their alphabet about with them to all 
the countries where they planted trading settlements, and 
it was adopted by Greeks and Latins, and gradually modified 
to suit the languages of all the civilized peoples of east and 
west. The Hebrew square letters are a form of divergence 
from the original type, and even the Sanskrit character in 
all its various styles can be traced back to the same source 
by experts who have studied the transformations through 
which it has passed in the course of ages. It is, of course, 
easy to understand that these ubiquitous little shapes which 
through so many centuries have had the task laid on them 
of spelling words in so many different languages must have 
undergone some variations in their values to suit the tongues 
that interpreted them. 

The original family of twenty letters have not always kept 
together, or avoided the intrusion of new comers. Some of 
the languages they have had to express, being in an early 
stage of development, have not wanted even so many as twenty 
letters, and have gradually allowed some of them to fall into 
disuse and be forgotten ; an instance of this we find in the 
alphabet of the northern nations — the Gothic — which consisted 
only of sixteen runes — called by new names ; they were most 
probably taken from the Phoenicians and furnished with mystic 
sayings belonging only to themselves. 

In languages where nicer distinctions of sound were called 
for than the original twenty Phoenician signs carried, a few 



200 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

fresh letters were added, but in no case has any quite new- 
form been invented. The added letters have always been a 
modification of one of the older forms — either a letter cut in 
half, or one modified by an additional stroke or dot. In 
this way the Romans made G out of C, by adding a stroke to 
one of its horns. V and IT, I and J were originally slightly 
different ways of writing one letter, which have been taken 
advantage of to express a new sound when the necessity for a 
greater number of sound-signs arose. At first sight it seems 
a simple thing enough to invent a letter, but let us remember 
that such a thing as an arbitrarily-invented letter does not 
exist anywhere. To create one out of nothing is a feat of 
which human ingenuity does not seem capable. Every single 
letter in use anywhere (we can hardly dwell on this thought 
too long) has descended in regular steps from the pictured 
object in whose name the sound it represents originally 
dwelt. Shape and sound were wedded together in early days 
by the first beginners of writing, and all the labour bestowed 
on them since has only been in the way of modification and 
adaptation to changed circumstances. No wonder that, when 
people believed a whole alphabet to have been invented 
straight off, they also thought that it took a god to do it. 
Thoth, the Great and-great, with his emblems of justice and 
his recording pencil ; Oannes, the Sea-monster, to whom all 
the wonders of the under-world lay open ; Swift Hermes, 
with his cap of invisibility and his magic staff; One-eyed 
Odin, while his dearly-purchased draught of wisdom-water 
was inspiring him still. ISTo one indeed — as we see plainly 
enough now — but a hero like one of these, was equal to the 
task of inventing an alphabet. 

Before we have quite done with alphabets, I ought to 
mention another system of ancient writing, the cuneiform ; 
which, though it has left no trace of itself on modern 
alphabets, is the vehicle which preserves some of the most 
interesting and ancient records in the world. The cuneiform 
or arrow-shaped character used by the ancient Chaldseans, 
Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, is supposed to owe its 
peculiar form to the material on which it was habitually 
graven by those who employed it. It arose in a country 
where the temples were built of unburned brick instead of 
stone, and the wedge shaped form of the lines composing the 
letters is precisely what would be most easily produced on 



PHONETIC WRITING. 201 

wet clay by the insertion and rapid withdrawal of a blunt- 
pointed stick or reed. Like all other systems, it began in 
rude pictures, which gradually came to have a phonetic value, 
in the same manner as did the Egyptian hierogl}'phics. The 
earliest records in this character are graven on the unburned 
bricks of pyramidal-shaped temples, which a little before the 
time of Abraham began to be built by a nation composed of 
mixed Shemite, Cushite, and Scythian peoples round the 
shores of the Persian Gulf. The invention of tbe character is 
ascribed in the records to the Scythian race, who are always 
designated by the sign of a wedge, which was equivalent to 
calling them the writers, or the literary people. It is perhaps 
allowable to conjecture that the Scythian invention terminated 
with the notion of depicting objects by means of wedge-shaped 
lines, and using them for picture-writing, such as the Chinese 
(also a Turanian people) invented, as you will remember, so 
early, that their language was checked in its progress of 
development by the premature discovery. The subsequent 
unfolding and application of the invention belonged to the 
Shemites. In their hands it became tbe vehicle in which the 
history of the two great empires of Babylon and Nineveh, and 
the achievements of ancient Persian kings, have come down to 
us. We have all seen and wondered at the -minute writing on 
the Assyrian marbles in the British Museum, and stood in 
awe before the human-headed monster gods — 

"Their flanks with dark runes fretted o'er," 

whose fate, in surviving the ruin of so many empires, and 
being brought from so far to enlighten us on the history of 
past ages, can never cease to astonish us. When we look at 
them again, let us spare a thought to the history of the 
character itself. Its mysteries have cost even greater labour 
to unravel than hieroglyphics themselves. To the latest times 
of the use of cuneiform by the Seleucidse, pictorial, symbolic, 
and phonetic groups continued to be mixed together, and a 
system of determinative signs was employed to show the reader 
in what sense each word was to be taken. The symbolism, too, 
is very complex, and the difficulty of reading the signs used 
phonetically is greatly increased by the fact of the language 
from which they acquired their values (a Turanian one) being 
different from the Semitic tongue, in which the most important 
records are written. 



CHAPTER XIY 



CONCLUSION. 



At this point, where we are bringing our inquiries to a 
conclusion, we would feign look a little nearer into the mists 
which shroud the past, and descry, were it possible, the actual 
dawn of history for the individual nations — see not only how 
the larger bodies of men have travelled through the pre-historic 
stages of their journey, but how, having reached their settled 
home, each people begins to emerge from the obscurity that 
surrounds its early days. What were the exact means, we ask, 
whereby a collection of nomadic or half -nomadic tribes separ- 
ated, reunited, separated again, and developed upon different 
soils the qualities which distinguish them from all others ? 
"What is, in fact, the beginning of real national life 1 

The worlds which circle round our sun, or rather, the 
multitudinous systems of orbs which fill space, might pose a 
like inquiry. There was a time when these which are now 
distinct worlds were confounded as continuous nebulpe, 
a thin vapour of matter whirling round in one unchanging 
circle. In time, their motion became less uniform, vortices — 
as the word is — set in, smaller bodies of vaporous matter 
which, obeying the universal movement, set up internal motions 
among themselves, and cooling, separated into separate orbs. 
How like is all this to the history of nations. These, 
conformed once together in one unstable mass of wandering 
tribes, have in like manner separated from their nebulous 
brethren, and, setting up their internal vortices, have coalesced 
into nations. And yet as a system of planets, albeit with their 



CONCLUSION. 203 

own distinctive motions, do all revolve in one direction round 
one central force, so the different families of nations, which we 
may call the planets of a system, seem in like manner com- 
pelled by a power external to themselves in one particular 
course to play a particular part in the world's history. The 
early^ stone-age Turanians, the Cushite civilizers of Egypt and 
Chalda?a, the Semitic people, may all be looked upon as 
different systems of nations, each with their mission to the 
human race ; and thus the Aryan people, after they had 
become so separated as to lose all family remembrance, are 
found working together to finish an assigned destiny, migrating 
in every direction, and carrying with them everywhere the 
seeds of a higher civilization. 

If we desire to get any idea of the process by which the 
separation of the Aryan people became completed, we must 
put quite upon one side the idea of a nation as we see it now. 
Now, when we speak the word, we think of a political unit 
subject to one government, stationary, and confined within 
pretty exact limits of space. But very different was the nation 
during the process of its foundation ; there was scarcely any 
political unity among them, their homes were unfixed, the 
members constantly shifting and changing combinations, like 
those heaps of sand we see carried along in a cyclone. Let us 
then forget our political atlases, with their different colours 
and well-marked boundaries, and think not of the inanimate 
adjunct of a nation, the soil on which it happens to dwell, but 
of the nation as the men of whom it is made up. The 
earliest things we discern are those vortices set up in the midst 
of a homogeneous people, an attractive power somewhere in the 
midst of them which draws them into closer fellowship. 
It acts like the attractive power of a crystal in selecting from 
any of the surrounding matters the fragments most suited to 
its proper formation. Thus the earliest traditions of a people 
are generally the history of some individual tribe from which 
the whole nation feigns itself descended ; either because of its 
actual pre-eminence from the beginning, the power it had of 
drawing other tribes to share its fortunes, or because, out of 
many tribes drawn together by some common interest or 
sentiment, the bards of later days selected this one tribe from 
among the others, and adopted its traditions for their own. If 
we remember this, much that would otherwise appear a hopeless 



20-4 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

mass of contradiction and ambiguity is capable of receiving a 
definite meaning. 

The first rays of European history shine upon the island- 
dotted sea and bounding coasts of the iEgean. Here sprang 
into life the Greek people, who have left behind so splendid a 
legacy of art and philosophy. These, as has been already 
said, made their entry into Europe traversing the southern 
shores of the Euxine, along which passed, still as one 
people, the ancestors of the Greeks and the Italians. The 
former, at all events, seem to have delayed long upon their 
route, and it was upon these shores, or perhaps rather in the 
table-land of ancient Phrygia, that first began the separation 
of two races who reunited to form the Greek nation. Some, 
the older race, the Pelasgi, made their way to the Hellespont, 
and by that route into European Greece; the others, thelonians 
as they subsequently became, passed onward to the sea-shore 
of Asia Minor, and, tempted no doubt by the facilities of the 
voyage, crossed from this mainland to the neighbouring islands, 
which lie so thickly scattered over the JEgean that the 
mariner passing from shore to shore of Asiatic and European 
Greece need never on his voyage lose sight of land. They did 
not, however, find these islands deserted, or occupied by 
savages only. The Phoenicians had been there beforehand, 
as they were beforehand upon almost every coast in Europe, 
and had made mercantile stations and established small colonies 
for the purposes of trading with the Pelasgi of Greece. The 
adventurous Ionians were thus brought early into contact 
with the advanced civilization of Asia, and from this source 
gained in all probability a knowledge of navigation, letters, 
and some of the Semitic mythical legends. Thus while the 
mainland Greeks had altered little of the primitive culture, 
the germs of a Hellenic civilization, of a Hellenic life, were 
being fostered in the islands of the ^Egean. We see this 
reflected in many Greek myths ; in the legend, for example, of 
Minos and his early Cretan kingdom, in the myth of Aphrodite 
springing from the sea by Cythera, and in the worship of Phoebus 
Apollo which sprang up in Delos. Legend spoke of two 
Minoi, one, the legislator of Crete, representative of all that 
was most ancient in national polity, and for that reason 
transferred to be the judge of souls in Hell ; the second, he who 
made war against the Athenians, and compelled them to pay 
their dreadful yearly tribute of seven youths and seven 



CONCLUSION. 205 

maidens to be devoured of the Minotaur in the Cretan 
labyrinth. Until Theseus came. No doubt the two Minoi 
are but amplifications of one being, who, Avhether mythical or 
historical, is an echo in the memory of Greeks of the still 
older Cretan kingdom. In both tales Minos has a dreadful 
aspect; perhaps because this "Lord of the Isles " had been 
inimical to the early growing communities of the mainland. 

The myths of Aphrodite and Apollo have been already 
commented upon as enfolding within them the history of 
their origin. Aphrodite is essentially an Asiatic divinity ; she 
springs to life in a Phoenician colony. But Phoebus Apollo is 
before all things the god of the Ionian Greeks ; and as their 
first national life begins in the islands, his birth too takes 
place in one of these, the central one of all, Delos. In Homer, 
Delos, or Ortygia, is feigned to be the central spot of the earth. 

Thus the Greeks were from the beginning a commercial 
people. Before their history began, there is proof that they 
had established a colony in the Delta of the Nile ; and the 
frequent use of the word Javan 1 in the Bible — which here 
stands for Ionians — shows how familiar was their name to 
the dwellers in Asia. "Wherever these mariners came in 
contact with their brethren of the continent they excited in 
them the love of adventure, and planted the germs of a new 
life, so that it was under their paramount influence that these 
primitive Greeks began to coalesce from mutually hostile 
tribes into nations. In northern Greece it was that the 
gathering together of tribes and cities first began. These 
confederations were always based primarily upon religious 
union, the protection of a common deity, a union to protect 
and support a common shrine. They were called Amphicty- 
onies, confederations of neighbours, a name which lived long 
in the history of Greece. These amphictyonies seem first to 
have arisen in the north. Here too the words Hellenic, 
Hellenes, first spring up as national epithets. Hellas never 
extended farther north than the north of Thessaly, and was 
naturally marked off from foreign countries by Olymjoia and 
Pierus. But the term spread southwards till it embraced 
all Greek-speaking lands to the extremity of the peninsula, and 
over the islands of the JEgean, and the coast of Asia Minor, 

1 The word would be more correctly spelt Yawan. It is known that 16 
has been changed from I von, or rather Iwon, by the elision of the digamnia. 



200 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

on to the countless colonies which issued from Greek shores ; 
for Hellas was not a geographical term, it included all the 
peoples of true Hellenic speech, and distinguished them from 
the barbaroi, the " babblers," of other lands. 

The two great nations of the Grseco-Italic family kept up 
some knowledge of each other after they had forgotten the 
days of their common life, and, strange to say, in days before 
either of the two races had come to regard itself as a distinct 
people, each was so regarded by the other. The Italians 
classed the Greeks in the common name of Grreci or Graii, 
and the Greeks bestowed the name of '07rt/co's upon the nation 
of the Italians. It is curious to reflect upon the different 
destinies which lay ahead of these two races, who came under 
such similar conditions into their new homes. Whether it 
were through some peculiarity in their national character, or 
a too rapid civilization, or the two great influences of a 
changeful character and adventurous life, the Greeks never 
welded properly together the units of their race ; the Italians 
through a much slower process of integration lived to weld 
their scattered fragments into the most powerful nation the 
world has ever seen. 

This second half, then, of the Gneco-Italic family, crossing 
the Hellespont like (or with) the first dwellers in Greece 
proper, proceeded onwards until, skirting the shores of the 
Adriatic, they found out a second peninsula, whose fertile 
plains tempted them to dispute the possession of the land 
with the older inhabitants. Who were these older inhabi- 
tants % In part they must have been those lake-dwellers of 
northern Italy to whom reference was made in our second 
chapter, and who were evidently closely allied to the tstone- 
a<*e men of Switzerland ; but besides these we have almost 
no trace of the men who were dispossessed by the Italic 
tribes, and these last who pushed to the farthest extremity of 
the peninsula must have completely absorbed, or completely 
exterminated, the aborigines. The process by which the 
Italians spread over the land is altogether hidden from us. 
Doubtless their several seats were not assigned to the different 
branches at once, or without bloodshed. Though still no 
more than separate tribes, we are able to divide the primitive 
Italicans into stocks of which the southern most resembled 
the ancient type of the Pelasgic family ; those in the centre 
formed the Latin group ; while north of these lay the Etrus- 



CONCLUSION. 207 

cans, the most civilized of all the three. At this time the 
tribes seem to have acknowledged no common bond, nothing 
corresponding to the word Hellenic had sprung up to unite 
their interests : existence was as yet to the strongest only. 
And while the land was in this chaotic state, one tribe, or 
small confederacy of tribes, among the Latin people began to 
assert its pre-eminence. We see them dimly looming through 
a cloud of fable, daring, warlike, unscrupulous in their 
dealings with their neighbours, firm in their allegiance to 
each other. This tribe gradually increased in strength and 
proportions till, from being a mere band of robbers defending 
themselves within their rude fortifications, they grew in the 
traditions of their descendants, and of the other tribes whom 
in course of time they either subdued or absorbed, to be 
regarded as the founders of Rome. They did not accomplish 
their high destiny without trials and reverses. More power- 
ful neighbouring kingdoms looked on askance during the days 
of their rise, and found opportunity more than once to over- 
throw their city and all but subdue their state. Their former 
brethren, the Kelts, 1 who had been beforehand of all the 
Aryan races in entering Europe, and now formed the most 
powerf id people in this quarter of the globe, several times 
swept down upon them like a devastating storm. But after 
each reverse the infant colony arose with renewed Anteean 
vigour. 

Thus in Italy, the development from the tribal to the national 
state was internal. No precocious maritime race awoke in 
many different centres the seeds of nationality ; rather this 
nationality was a gradual growth from one root, the slow 
response to a central attractive force. The energy of Rome did 
not go out in sea adventure, or in the colonization of distant 
lands ; but it was firmly bound to absorb the different people 
of her own peninsula, people of like blood with herself, 
but in every early stage of culture from an almost nomadic 
condition to one of considerable advancement in the arts 
of peace. 

When from the Greeks and Romans we turn to the Kelts 
and Teutons, we must descend much lower in the records of 
history before can get any clear glimpse at these. The Kelts, 
who were probably the first Aryans in Europe, seem gradually 

1 i.e. the Gauls. 



208 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

to have been forced farther and farther west by the incur- 
sions of other peoples. At one time, however, we have 
evidence that they extended eastward, at least as far as the 
Rhine, and over all that northern portion of Italy — now 
Lombardy and part of Sardinia — which to the Romans went 
by the name of Cisalpine Gaul. The long period of subjection 
to the Roman rule which Gaul experienced, obliterated in 
that country all traces of its early Keltic manners, and 
we are reduced for our information concerning these to the 
pages of Roman historians, or to the remains of Keltic laws and 
customs preserved in the western homes of the race. The 
last have only lately received a proper attention. The most 
primitive Irish code — the Brehon laws — has been searched 
for traces of the primitive Keltic life. From both our sources 
we gather that the Kelts were divided into tribes regarded as 
members of one family. These clans were ruled over bv 
chiefs, whose offices were hereditary, or very early became so. 
They were thus but slightly advanced out of the most primi- 
tive conditions, — they cannot be described as a nation. Had 
they been so, extensive and warlike as they were, they would 
have been capable of subduing all the other infant nationalities 
of Aryan folk. As it was, as mere combinations of tribes under 
some powerful chieftain (Caesar describes just such), they gave 
trouble to the Roman armies even under a Ca?sar, and were 
in early days the most dreadful enemies of the Republic. 
Under Brennus, they besieged and took Rome, sacked the 
city, and were only induced to retire on the payment of a 
heavy ransom. A hundred years later, under another Brennus, 
they made their way into Thrace, ravaged the whole country, 
and from Nicomedes, King of Bithynia, obtained a settlement 
in Asia Minor in the district which from them received the 
name of Galatia. The occurrence of those two names Brennus 
shows us that this could hardly have been a mere personal name. 
It is undoubtedly the Celtic Brain, a king or chieftain, the 
same from which we get the mythic Bran, 1 and in all pro- 
bability the Irish O'Brien. The recognition of the Celtic 
fighting capacity in the ancient world is illustrated by another 
circumstance, and this is more especially interesting to us of 

1 For the story of Bran's head, which spoke after it was cut off, and 
which is in its natural interpretation probably the sun, see Mr. M. 
Arnold's Celtic Literature. 



CONCLUSION. 209 

the modern world, whose army is so largely made up of Kelts 
from Ireland and Scotland (Highlanders). Hierdn I., the 
powerful tyrant of Syracuse, founded his despotism, as he 
afterwards confessed, chiefly upon the 30,000 Gaulish 
mercenaries whom he kept in pay. 

For the rest, we know little of the internal Keltic life and 
of the extent of its culture. Probably this differed con- 
siderably in different parts, in Gaul for instance, and in 
Ireland. The slight notices of Gaulish religion which Caesar 
gives refer chiefly to its external belongings, to the hereditary 
sacerdotal class, who seem also to have been the bardic class ; 
of its myths and of their real significance we know little more 
than what can be gathered by analogy of other nations. We 
may assert that their nature- worship approached most nearly 
to the Teutonic form among those of all the Aryan peoples. 

Peculiarly interesting to us are such traces as can be 
gleaned of the Teutonic race. The first time that they show 
themselves upon the stage of History is in company with the 
Kelts, if indeed the Teutones, who in company with the 
Cimbri, the . Tigurini and the Ambrones were defeated by 
Marius (b.c. 101) were really Teutons. 1 The second of these 
four names is the same with the still extant Cymri (pro- 
nounced Cumri), the native name of the Welsh, who are of 
course Kelts ; so that, if this be the first appearance of 
Germans, we find them in' company with the Kelts. What 
branch of the German family (if any) the Teutones were, is 
quite uncertain. Again, in the pages of Caesar we meet with 
several names of tribes evidently of German origin. The 
Treviri, the Marcomanni (Mark -men, men of the march or 
boundary), Allemanni (all-men, or men of the great or the 
mixed 2 nation), the Suevi (Suabians), the Cherusci — men of 
the sword, perhaps the same as Saxons, whose name has the 
same meaning. 

It is not till after the death of Theodosius at the end of the 
fourth century of our era that the Germans fill a conspicuous 
place on the historical canvas. By this time they had come to 
be divided into a number of different nations, similar in most of 
the elements of their civilization and barbarism, closely allied 
in languages, but politically unconnected, or even opposed. 

1 For historic doubts' on this point, see Latham's Germania, Appendix. 

2 Latham's Germania. 



210 



THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 



Most of these Teutonic peoples grew into mighty nations and 
deeply influenced the future of European history. It is there- 
fore right that we pass them rapidly in review. 1. The Goths 
had been long settled in the region of the Lower Danube 
chiefly in the country called Mcesia, where Ulfilas, a Gothic 
prince who had been converted to Christianity, returned 
to preach to his countrymen, became a bishop among them 
and by his translation of the Bible into their tongue, the 
Mceso-Gothic, has left a perpetual memorial of the language 
During the reign of Honorius, the son of Theodosius, a portion 
oi this nation, the West- or Yisi-goths, quitted their home 
and undertook under Alaric (All-king) their march into 
Italy, thrice besieged and finally took Rome. Then turning 
aside, they founded a powerful kingdom in the south of Gaul 
and m Spain. A century later the East-Goths (Ostro-Goths) 
under the great Theodoric (People's-king) again invaded Italy 
and founded an Ostrogothic kingdom upon the ruins of the 
Western Empire. 2, 3, 4, 5. The Suevi, Alani, Burgundians, 
and Vandals crossed the Rhine in 405, and entered Roman 
territory never again to return to whence they came The 
Burgundians (City-men) fixed their abode in east-central 
Gaul (Burgundy and Switzerland), where their kingdom lasted 
till it was subdued by the Franks; but the other three 
passed on into Spain, and the Vandals (Wends) 1 from Spain 
into Africa, where they founded a kingdom. 6. The Franks 
(Free-men) having been for nearly a century settled between 
the Meuse and the Scheldt, began under Clovis (Chlodvig 
Hludwig, Lewis,) (480 a.d.) their career of victory, from which 
they did not rest until the whole of Gaul owned the sway of 
Merovingian kings. 7. The Longobardi (Long-beards, or men 
of the long borde, long stretch of alluvial land), who after the 
Ostrogoths had been driven out of Italy by the Emperor of 
the East, founded in defiance of his power a second Teutonic 
kingdom in that country, a kingdom which lasted till the 
days of Charlemagne. 8. And last, but we may safely say not 
least, the Saxons (Sword men, from seaxa, a sword) who 
invaded Britain, and under the name of Angles founded the 
nation to which we belong, the longest lived of all those which 
rose upon the ruins of the Roman Empire. 

And therefore possibly Slaves, Wend being a name applied by Teutons 



to Slaws 



CONCLUSION. 211 

The condition of the German people, even so late as the 
time when they began their invasion of the Roman territory, 
was far behind that of the majority of their Aryan fellows. 
It is likely that they were little more civilized than the Greeks 
and Romans were, in days when they lived together as one 
people. For the moment when we catch sight of these — the 
Greeks and Romans — in their new homes, we see them settled 
agriculturists, with no trace left of their wandering habits. 
It was not so with the Teutons : they knew agriculture cer- 
tainly, they had known it before they separated from the other 
peoples of the European family (for the Greek and Latin words 
for plough reappear in Teutonic speech 1 ), but they had not 
altogether bid adieu to their migratory life ; we see them still 
flowing in their nebulous condition into the Roman lands. Even 
the Tartars of our day — the very picture of a nomadic people 
— practise some form of agriculture. They plant buckwheat, 
which, growing up in a few months, allows them to reap the 
fruits of their industry without tying them long to a parti- 
cular spot. The Teutons were more stationary than the 
Tartars, but doubtless they too were constantly shifting their 
homes — choosing fresh homesteads, as Tacitus says they did, 
wherever any spot or grove or stream attracted them. The 
condition of society called the village community, which has 
been described in a former chapter, though long abandoned by 
the cultivated Greeks and Romans, was still suitable to the 
exigencies of their life ; but these exigencies imposed upon it 
some fresh conditions. Their situation, the situation of those 
who made their way into the western countries of Europe, was 
essentially that of conquerors ; for they must keep in sub- 
jection the original inhabitants, whether Romans or Celts ; 
and so all their social arrangements bent before the primary 
necessity of an effective war footing. Age and wisdom were 
of less value to the community than youthful vigour. The 
patriarchal chief, chosen for his reputation for wisdom and 
swaying by his mature counsels the free assemblies of the 
states, gives place with them to the leader, famous for his 
valour and fortunes in the field, by virtue of which he exacts a 
more implicit obedience than would be accorded in unwarlike 
times, until by degrees his office becomes hereditary ; the 
partition of the conquered soil among the victors, and the 

1 e.g. Old Gorman, aran, to plough = arare, &c. 



212 THE DAWN OF HISTOEY. 

holding of it upon conditions of military service, conditions 
which led so easily to the assertion of a principle of primo- 
geniture, and thence, by slow but natural stages, to the con- 
ditions of tenure known as feudal ; these are the marks of 
the early Teutonic society. 

Such germs of literary life as they had were enshrined in 
the ballads, such as all nations possess in some form. The 
re-echoes of these have come down to us in the earliest known 
poems by men of Teutonic race, all of which are unfortu- 
nately of very recent date. All are distinguished by the 
principle of versifying which is essentially Teutonic; the 
trusting of the cadence, not to an exact measurement of 
syllables or quantities, but to the pauses or beats of the voice 
in repetition, the effect of these beats being heightened by the 
use of alliteration. Poems of this true Teutonic character 
are the elder (or Soemund's) "Edda" in the Icelandic, our Saxon 
poem "Beowulf " and the " Bard's Tale," and one or two Low 
German ballads, the most celebrated of which, though one of 
the latest, is the "Nibelungen lied." These poems repeat the old 
mythic legends which had for centuries been handed down 
from father to son, and display the mythology and religion 
of our German ancestors, such as in a former chapter we 
endeavoured to sketch them out. Slight as they are, they are 
of inestimable value, in that they help us to read the mind of 
heathen Germany, and to weigh the significance of the last 
great revolution in Europe's history, a revolution wherein we 
through our ancestors have taken and through ourselves are 
Still taking part, and in which we have therefore so close an 
interest. 

But having carried the reader down to this point, our task 
comes to an end. Even for Europe, the youngest born as it 
were in the world's history, when we have passed the epoch of 
Teutonic invasion, the star of history sera rubens has definitely 
risen. Nations from this time forward emerge more and more 
into light, and little or nothing falls to the part of prehistoric- 
study. 



NOTES AND AUTHOEITIES. 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES. 



CHAPTERS I. and II. 

Christy and Lartet, Horce Aquitanicce. 

Davis and Tkurnam, Crania Britannica. 

Dawkins, Gave Hunting. 

Evans, Stone Implements of Great Britain. 

Geikie, The Great Ice Age. 

Lyell, Antiquity of Man. 

Lubbock, Pre-historic Times. 

Tylor, Early History of Mankind. 

Tylor, Primitive Culture. 
Wilson (0.), Pre-historic Man. 

Mortillet, Origine de la Navigation et de la Peche. 
Troyon, Habitations Lacustres. 

Keller, Pfahlbauten (translated by J. E. Lee). 

And numerous articles in the Archaeological journals of 
England, France, and Germany.. 

P. 9. The question concerning the history of Palaeolithic man 
which presses for the most immediate solution, is that which has 
been just touched upon here : whether the variety of animal 
remains with which his remains are found associated, do 
really point to an immensely lengthened period of his existence, 
in this primitive state. We have said, that his bones are 
found associated with those of the mammoth (Elephas primi- 
genius), with the woolly rhinoceros, and with other animals 



216 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

whose existence seems to imply a cold temperate, or almost 
frigid, climate ; at another place, or a little lower in the same 
river bed (the higher gravel beds are the oldest), we may find 
the bones of the hippopotamus, an animal winch in these 
days is never found far away from the tropics. The conclusion 
seems obvious : man must have lived through the epoch of 
change — enormously long though it was — from a cold to an 
almost tropical climate. Some writers have freely accepted 
this view, ami even gone beyond it to argue the possibility of 
man having lived through one of the great climatic revolutions 
which produced an Ice Age. (See the arguments on this head 
in Mr. Geikie's Ice Age.) And in a private letter, written 
from the West Indies, Kingsley says that he sees reason for 
thinking that man existed in the Miocene Era (see Life of 
Kingsley), 

On the other hand, these rather startling theories have not 
yet received their imprimatur from the highest scientific 
authorities. There are many ways in which they clash with 
the story which the stone-age remains seem to tell of man's 
primitive life. For instance, the civilization of the caves is to 
all appearance in advance of that of the drift- beds; and yet 
as we have seen (p. 10), the cave men must have existed 
during the earlier part of the stone age, that of the mammoth. 
Here we see evidences of a decided improvement, an advance ; 
whereas between the drift-remains associated with the 
mammoth and those associated with the hippopotamus are 
seen few or none. 

P. 32. The view put forward in this chapter concerning the 
races of the neolithic men in Europe, is that which seems to 
the writer most consistent with all the known facts, concerning 
the distribution of pre-historic man. As was said in the 
Preface, the students in different branches of prehistoric 
inquiry have not begun yet to collate sufficiently the results 
of their researches, and their opinions sometimes clash. We 
have to reconcile the ethnologist with the student of com- 
parative philology. Most of the former are agreed that the 
earliest inhabitants of this quarter of the globe were most 
allied in character to the Lapps and Finns ; and were con- 
sequently of what we have distinguished (Ch. V.) as the yellow- 
skinned family. But they are far from agreed that the bronze- 
using men were not of the same race ; and some (Keller for 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES. 217 

instance) are violently opposed to the notion that the 
substitution of metal for stone was a sudden transition, and 
due to foreign importation. In some instances there is 
evidence that the change was gradual. 

But the evidence on the other side is stronger. The human 
remains found with the bronze weapons are generally clearly 
distinguishable (in. formation of skull, &c), from those 
associated with the implements of stone. The funeral rites of 
the bronze age men were different from those of the stone- age 
men ; for while the former buried their dead, the latter 
seem generally to have burnt theirs (see Grimm, Ueber das 
Verbrennen tier Leicheit). Now we have strong reason for 
believing that the Aryan races (see Chs. IV. V.) practised 
this sort of interment ; and we have further reason for 
thinking, that the use of metals was known to them before 
their entry into Europe, (see Pictet Les Origines indo-europeennes 
and Grimm Geschichte der dent. Sprache). Moreover, these 
Aryans must have come into Europe at some time, and when 
they did come, they must have produced an entire revolution 
in the life of its inhabitants. No time seems so appropriate 
for their appearance as that which closes the age of stone. 

This theory does not preclude the possibility of, in many 
places, a side by side existence of stone users and bronze users, 
or even a gradual extension of the art of metallurgy ; and these 
conditions would be especially likely to arise in such secluded 
spots as the lake-dwellings. Therefore, Dr. Keller's arguments 
are not impeached by the theory that the Aryans were the 
intioducers of bronze into Europe. 



CHAPTERS III. and IV. 

Mliller, Lectures on the Science of Language. 
Id., Sanskrit Literature. 

Peile, Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology. 
Wilson, Introduction to the Rig Veda Sanhita. 



Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Europeennes. 
Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik. 



218 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

Grimm, Gcschichte der Deut. Sprache. 
Kiilm, Zeitsch. fur Verg. Sprachforschung. 
Pott, Etymologische Forschungen. 

P. 40. Although what is said here concerning the superior 
importance of consonantal sounds over those of vowels holds 
universally, and must necessarily do so from the characters of 
the two sorts of sound, yet the relative position which vowels 
and consonants hold varies greatly in different classes of 
language. 

In Aryan languages the essential root is made up of vowels 
and consonants, and the variations upon the root idea are 
generally expressed by additions to the root and not by internal 
changes in it. In this way, as we saw, all grammatical in- 
flexions are made : homo, hom-inis, am-o, am-abam, tvtctw, 
itvtttov, tTviJ/oi', &c. But in Semitic languages the root consists 
of the consonants only, and the inflexions are produced by 
internal changes, changes of the vowels which belong to a 
consonant. For example, in Arabic the three consonants k-t-l 
(katl) represent the abstract notion of the act of killing. 
Prom them we get Tc&til, one who kills ; Jcitl (pi. aldal), an 
enemy ; katala, he slew ; kutila, he was slain. From z-r-b 
(zarb), the act of striking; ear bum, a striking (in concrete 
sense) ; zardbun, a striker ; zwaba, he struck ; zuriba, he was 
struck. Compare these with occido, occidi, occisor, or with 
tvtttu), TETvcpa, &c, and we see that in the Aryan tongues the 
radical remains almost unchanged, and the inflexions are made 
ab e.xtra ; but in the Semitic language the inflexions are made 
by changes of vowel sound within the framework of the root 
consonants. 

The usual grammatical root in Arabic is composed of three 
consonants as in the examples given above. Most of the 
Semitic languages are in too fully formed a state to allow us 
to see how these roots, which are of course at the least dis- 
syllabic, grew up out of single sounds ; but a comparison with 
some languages of the Semitic family (e.g. Egyptian) which 
are still near to their early radical state, show us that they 
must have done so. 

P. 43. The Coptic language, which is the nearest we can 
get to the tongue of the ancient Egyptians, is extremely 
interesting in that it displays the processes of grammar 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES. 219 

formation, as has just been said in a more intelligible shape 
than we find in the higher Semitic tongues. 

P. 59. It must not be forgotten that the ethnology of a 
people is not necessarily the same as its language. When we 
speak of a family of language including the tongues of a certain 
number of races, we do not imply that they were wholly of 
the same ethnological family. This caution is especially 
necessary as regards the earliest great pre-historic nations who 
seem to have been what are called Cushites — anything but 
pure Semites (see Ch. V.) — but whose languages may properly 
be ranged in the Semitic family. The Egyptian, for instance, 
was more nearly monosyllabic than any other Semitic tongue 
(Ch. XIII.) ; yet such inflexions as it has show an evident 
relationship with Hebrew and other Semitic tongues (see 
Appendix to Bunsen's Egypt's Place in Universal History). 



CHAPTER V. 

Bunsen, Egypt's Place, <kc. (ed. Dr. Birch). 

Legge, Chinese Classics, with Introduction, &c. 

Lenormant, Manual of the Ancient History of the East (trs.). 

Pickering, Races of Man. 

Rawlinson, Herodotus, with Notes. 

Id., Five Great Monarchies, &c. 

Mariette Bey, Ahrege de V Hist, d'Egypte. 

Maury, Le Livre et V Homme. 

Rouge (Yte. de), Examen de I'Ouvrage de M. Bunsen. 

Brugsch, Recueils de Monuments Egyptians. 

Id., Histoire d' Egypt. 

Id., Materiaux pour servir, &c. 

Lepsius, Chronologie der Egypten. 

P. 71. The word Turanian is untenable as an ethnological 
term. It can be used — though with a somewhat loose signifi- 
cation — to distinguish those languages which are in the 
agglutinative stage. But the reader must be careful not to 
suppose that it comprises a class of nearly allied peoples, as 



220 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

the Aryan and Semitic families of language, upon the whole, 
do. The only race which includes the Turanian peoples of 
Europe and Asia includes also those who speak monosyllabic 
languages : this is the yellow race, and is of course a division 
of the widest possible kind. It is to be observed that while 
the yellow race is spoken of as extending down all the islands 
of the Australasian group, it does not include Australia itself, 
whose inhabitants belong to the Australian division of the 
black race (p. 70). These Australian negroes who differ 
notably from those of Africa are found also inhabitants of 
Madagascar. The reader may consult an interesting paper by 
Professor Huxley (Proc. of Prehist. Asso.) for some further 
views concerning the extension of the Negritic family; though 
all these views have not been adopted in the foregoing chapters. 

Concerning the relationship of the Egyptians to the negroes 
a variety of opinions are held. There can be no question that 
their type of face forbids us to doubt that there was some 
relationship between them ; while the representation of 
negroes upon the ancient monuments of Egypt shows that 
from the remotest historical period there was a marked dis- 
tinction between the peoples, and that from that early time 
till now the negroes have not changed in the smallest particular 
of ethnical character. The Egyptians and the primitive 
Chaldaeans are considered to have been essentially the same 
people, the Cushites— or as some call them Hamites— a race 
which perhaps anciently spread from Susiana across Arabia 
and the Bed Sea to Abyssinia and Egypt. 

The term Hamitic is altogether misleading, and had better 
be unused in ethnical classifications. The real meaning, if 
we follow the intention of its use in the Bible, is to distinguish 
from the purer Semites (Hebrews, Moabites, &c), a number 
of races, such as the Canaanites generally, who spoke Semitic 
languages, but were very probably of impure blood, very likely 
of Semitic and Turanian intermixture. If the word Hamitic 
be used to include the rest of the inhabitants of the world 
who were not Semitic or Aryan, then, though it Avill not be 
very useful, no objection can be taken to its employment. 
But in that case we shall be obliged, forming our classification 
by the ^ known rather than by the unknown, to include the 
Canaanites (who spoke Semitic languages) in the Semitic 
family ; and this will be in direct contradiction to the use of 
Hamitic in the Bible narrative. 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES. 221 



CHAPTERS VI. and VII. 

Maine, Ancient Laiv. 

Id., Village Communities. 

Id., Early Institutions. 

Nasse, Agricultural Community (translated by Ouvry). 

Coulanges, La Cite Antique. 

Lavalaye, La Propriete et ses Formes Primitives. 

Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Eiiropeennes. 

Grimm, Deutsche RecMs- Alterthumer . 
Maurer, Geschichte der Dorf- Verfassung. 

In the account here given of the two most important social 
forms, the patriarchal family and the village community, the 
endeavour has been rather to give such a picture of them 
as may exhibit their chief peculiarities in a sufficiently clear 
and stinking manner, than to enter into a minute examination 
of the various remains from winch the ■ picture has been 
constructed. It must not be supposed, however, that the 
representations here given can be completely verified from 
existing information. They are rather to be looked upon as 
typical of what these forms may have been in their earliest 
stage and under favourable circumstauces. We only meet 
with traces of them when undergoing decay. Although the 
writer fully recognises the importance of the researches of 
McLellan and others concerning the earlier conditions 
of society, no attempt has been made to give an account 
of the results which have been arrived at in this field of 
inquiry. Two reasons may be assigned for this omission. 
Firstly, the intrinsic difficulties of treating the subject in 
a manner suitable to the " general reader " are, it is conceived, 
a sufficient excuse for the omission. Secondly, the results at 
present attained are so vague that the mere statement of 
them would be valueless without entering into great detail. 
All that can as yet fairly be regarded as established is 
either that the Aryan and Semitic races have at one time 
possessed social customs and practices similar to those which 
are found in the most barbarous peoples ; or that they have 



222 THE DAWN OF HISTOEY. 

at some time in their history so far amalgamated with, or 
been influenced by other races that had emerged from this 
state, as to absorb into their traditions and customs traces of 
a social condition of a much lower and more primitive kind 
than that in which we first find them. If we try to form any 
conception of what the earlier state may have been, we at 
once see that the results at present attained are almost purely 
negative. All that can be predicated is that at one time a 
large proportion of the human race did not possess the notions 
of the family and the marriage tie which were entertained 
by people in the patriarchal state ; that they did not trace 
blood relationship in the same way. What particular 
customs immediately preceded or led to the patriarchal family, 
whether this latter is to be considered as the original social 
type, and the lower forms are to be regarded as derived from 
it, or vice versa, — to these questions no satisfactory answer can 
at present be given. 

Each step indeed in social change is to be looked upon, to a 
great extent, as simply a phenomenon to be noted, the causes 
for which it is impossible to determine accurately. This is 
especially the case with the village community. The extent 
of its distribution would incline one to the belief, that it is a 
natural or necessary result of a certain stage of social develop- 
ment ; while the elaborate and artificial nature of its con- 
struction points to the probability of some common origin from 
which its development might be traced. The greatest difficulty, 
however, lies in trying to assign to this institution its due 
effect on civilization : for it is frequently found in close com- 
bination with institutions to which its spirit seems most strongly 
opposed. Thus while we find it flourishing among the Germanic 
tribes, we also discover among them a tendency to the custom 
of primogeniture much more marked than is discoverable 
among other Aryan races. Yet this custom scarcely seems to 
find a place in the pure village community beyond the limits 
of each individual household. At the same time the patri- 
archal power was certainly less among the Germans than 
among the early Romans, and probably also less than among 
the Slaves. 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES. 



00! 



CHAPTERS VIII.— XT. 

Bunsen, God in History (trs.). 

Id., Egypt's Place, &c. 

Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations. 

Miiller, Op. cit. 

Id., Lectures on Sc. of Religion. 

Id., Chips from a German Workshop. 

Ralston, Songs of the Russian People. 

Id. Russian Folk-tales. 

Rawlinson, Op. cit. 

Bournouf, Commentaire sur le Yagna. 

Eouge (Vte. de), Etudes sur le Rituel des Egypt.] 

Busching, Nibelunge Lied. 

Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie. 

Id. Ueber das Verbr. der Leichen. 

Id. Heldenbtich. 

Kiihn, Sagen, Gebrduche u. Mdhrchen. 

Id. in Zeitschf. v. Sp. and Z.f. dent. Alt. 

Lepsius, Todtenbuch. 

Preller, Griechische Mythologie. 

Simrock, Hondbuch der d. Myth. 

Welcker, Griechische Gbtterlehre. 

Edda den eldra og Snorra. 

P. 127. I take the liberty of transcribing a passage from 
Mr. Max-Miiller's Lecture on the Science of Religion. 

"One of the oldest names of the deity, among the Semitic 
nations, was El. It meant strong. It occurs in the Baby- 
lonian inscriptions as llu, God, and in the very name of 
Bab-il, the gate or temple of II. In Hebrew, it occurs both 
in its general sense, as strong, or hero, and as a name of God. 
We have it in Beth-el, the House of God, and in many other 
names. If used with the article as ha-El, the Strong One, or 
the God, it always is meant in the Old Testament for Jehovah, 
the true God. El, however, always retained its appellative 
power, and we find it applied therefore, in parts of the Old 
Testament to the God of the Gentiles also. 

" The same El was worshipped at Byblus, by the Phoenicians, 



224 THE DAWN OF HISTOEY. 

and lie was called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His 
father was the son of Eliun, the most high god, who had been 
killed by wild animals. The son of Eliun who succeeded 
him was dethroned, and at last slain by his own son El, whom 
Philo identities with the Greek Kronos, and represents as the 
presiding deity of the planet Saturn. In the Himyaritio 
inscriptions too the name of El has been discovered. 

" With the name of El, Philo connected the name of Elohim, 
the plural of Eloah. In the battle between El and his father, 
the allies of El, he says, were called Eloeim, as those who 
were with Kronos were called Kronioi. This is no doubt a 
very tempting etymology of Eloah ; but as the best Semitic 
scholars, and particularly Professor Fleischer, have declared 
against it, we shall have, however reluctantly, to surrender it. 

" Eloah is the same word as the Arabic IlAh, God. In 
the singular, Eloah is used synonymously with El ; in the 
plural, it may mean gods in general, or false gods : but it 
becomes in the Old Testament the recognised name for the 
true God, plural in form but singular in meaning. In Arabic 
Ilah without the article means a god in general ; with the 
article Al-Ilah, or Allah, becomes the name of the God of 
Abraham and Moses." 

Nature-Worship. — The part which the phenomena of nature 
play in training the thoughts of uncultivated men toward 
religion, and poetry, and hero-worship, and legendary lore, has 
been made the subject of warm controversy. And it may not 
be altogether amiss if we bestow a little thought upon the 
question, and upon the character of evidence by which this 
nature-worship is thought to be established. 

That it is in no sense a degradation of our estimate of man 
to suppose that his thoughts were led upward from the con- 
templation of the objects of sense which lay around to the 
contemplation of a Higher Being beyond the region of 
sensible things, will become, it is to be hoped, clear upon a 
little reflection, and upon a candid examination of what has 
been said in pp. Ill, 112. But still it may fairly be asked. 
Did this process of deifying the powers of nature take place: 
why should not the human mind have come 'ndependently by 
the direct revelation of God's voice speaking in the hearts of 
men to a notion of a God ruler of the World, and then by 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES. 225 

a natural process of decay, proceed thence to a polytheism, a 
pantheon of beings who were supposed to rule over the 
different phenomena of nature, just as the different members 
of a cabinet hold sway over the various branches of national 
government ? 

This was, until comparatively recent years, the received 
opinion concerning mythology, and it is one which tacitly 
keeps its place in the writings of many scholars, especially of 
those who have been brought up almost exclusively upon the 
study of classical languages and classical religions : for it is 
only after a wide study, and comparison of many different 
religions in many different stages, that the conviction of the 
opposite truth forces itself upon one. It is obvious that for 
the . purpose of a scientific knowledge of the formation of 
religious systems, we must not observe them in their fullest 
development, but rather turn to such of their brother- 
religions as have remained in a more stunted condition. Nor, 
again, should we deal with an extremely imaginative people, 
like the Greeks : for with them changes from any primitive 
form will be much more rapid and more complete than the 
changes in some more meagre systems. The Teutonic mytho- 
logies are for this purpose more expressive than those of 
Greece ; and partly on this account, partly because they are 
less familiar to the reader, we have drawn largely upon them 
for illustration in our chapters upon Aryan religion and Folk- 
tales. 

The most useful of all, however, is the religion of the Yedas, 
in so far as the Yedas give us an insight into the earliest faith 
of the people of India. Here we may often detect the etymo- 
logy of a name which would be inexplicable if we only knew it 
in Greek or Latin and Norse. We have seen how this is the 
case in respect of the word Dyaus ; and how the etymology 
of this word clearly shows, what from themselves we should 
never discover, that Zeus and Jupiter and Tyr are names 
which had originally the same meaning as a natural pheno- 
menon. We say originally, because the Sanskrit is found by 
numberless examples (whereof we give one, duhitar) to show 
an origin for many words whose origin is lost in other Aryan 
languages, and therefore to stand nearest to the primitive 
tongue of the Aryans. In this lies the whole force of the 
argument. If the old Aryans once used the same word for 
" heaven " and for " god," it is impossible to believe that they 

Q 



226 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

had the power of separating at will the two ideas which we 
receive from these two words ; for an examination of formal 
logic shows us that notions do not become completely distin- 
guishable until they receive individual names. The inference is 
obvious that the gods of our Aryan ancestors were nature-gods 
in the strictest sense. 

It is equally true, however, that such diversities tend to 
fall into certain forms, and accommodate themselves to ideals 
which we may believe pre-existed in the human mind. It is 
thus that we have noticed the sun-gods and the heaven-gods 
fulfilling their separate functions, and answering to certain 
defined needs in the human heart. 

P. 137. Persephone, and Baldur. — The true tragedy of the 
death of summer is in the Norse religion portrayed in the 
myth of Baldur, the sun-god, which in respect of its force and 
intention fully answers to the Persephone myth. It has 
often been a subject of surprise that Baldur' s-bale, Baldur' s 
death, was not celebrated at a time of year appropriate to 
mourning for the loss of the sun-god, but at the summer solstice 
when Baldur attains his fullest might and brightest splendour. 
Why choose such a day as that to think of his mournful 
bedimming in the wintry months? It seems to show a strange, 
gloomy, and forecasting nature on the part of our Norse 
ancestors to be always reflecting that in the midst of life — 
in the midst of our brightest, fullest life — we are in death. 

I imagine that the custom of celebrating Baldur's-bale in 
this way arose not entirely from the desire to preach this 
melancholy sermon ; though in part no doubt this desire was 
the cause of it. It arose also from a dramatic instinct 
inducing men for the sake of a strong contrast to surround the 
sun-god with all the images of summer at the time when we 
are thinking of his death. It gives a dramatic intensity to 
the moment ; and thus it corresponds exactly with the picture 
of Persephone playing in the meadows in spring-time sur- 
rounded by all the attributes of spring, just as Hades rises 
from the earth to bear her for ever from the light of day. 

P. 142. — Thorr's journey to the house of giant Utgardloki 
(out- wo rid fire — fire of the under-world of Ch. x., and Ch. 
xi. p. 168) is not told in the elder Edda, but appears at some 
length in the Edda of Snorro (Daemisb'gur 44 — 48). There 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES. 227 

can be little question of the antiquity of the tale, closely con- 
nected as it is with the labours of Hercules as well as with all the 
most important elements in the Norse mythology. But it may 
very easily be that it has undergone some modifications before 
appearing in its present form ; and we should be naturally 
inclined to signalise as modern additions those parts of the 
story which have an allegorical rather than a truly mythical 
character. Allegory is a thing altogether distinct from real 
myth, and when it springs up shows that the mythical character 
of the story is falling into oblivion. The former is a fox*m of 
self conscious fancy, while the latter is the child of genuine belief. 
For instance — as an illustration of the difference between 
allegory and mythology — I should be inclined to signalise the 
appearance of the beings Logi (fire) and Elli (old age) as 
a fanciful, an invented element in the story. Logi and Elli 
are not important enough to be genuine deities of Fire and 
Age. In fact, the former element has already received 
its personification in the person of Loki. Yet the inci- 
dents with which they are associated may well have formed an 
integral character of the older legend ; and . in the case of 
Elli I feel pretty sure must have done so. 

What I imagine to have been the real case is this. Thorr's 
journey to Utgardloki is a story closely parallel to the myth of 
the Death of Baldur, and tells once more the story of the sun god 
descending to the under-world. This fact is clearly shown by 
the name of the giant, who is nothing else than a personification 
of the funeral fire, the fire which surrounds the abode of souls 
(pp. 153, 176). All the powers with whom Thorr strives are 
personifications in some way of death — all, or almost all. He 
tugs as he thinks at a cat and cannot lift it from the ground ; 
but the cat is Jormundgandr, the great mid-earth serpent, in- 
part the personification of the sea, but also (by reason of this) 
the personification of the devouring hell " rapax Orcus " 
(compare Cerberus, the Sarameyas, and notice the middle 
age change of Orcus to Ogre). He (or, in the story as we now 
have it, Loki) contends with a personification of the death-fire, 
not with a mere allegorical representation of fire in its 
common aspect. And again he contends not with Elli, old 
age, but with Hel, the goddess of the under-world. 

This is the original form into which I read back the 
mythical journey to Utgardloki. It is easy to see how the 
story got changed. Loki is made to accompany Thorr instead 



228 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

of to fight against him ; the later mythologies not being able 
to understand how Loki could sometimes be a god and dwell 
in Asgard, sometimes be a giant of Jotunheim. With this 
change the others would easily creep in. Logi is invented to 
light with Loki, and Elli in place of Hel appears in obedience 
to a desire for allegory in the place of true myth. 

P. 150. Thanatos. — Thanatos and Hypnos belong again to 
the region of allegory rather than pure mythology. For in 
pure mythology the place of the first is taken by Hades. In 
Vedic mythology their part is played by the two Saramayas ; 
one probably chiefly a divinity of Death, the other of Sleep, 
and the two being brothers, as of course Death and Sleep 
are. 

It has been suggested that among a group of figures sculp- 
tured upon the drum of a column brought from the Artemesium 
(Temple of Diana) at Ephesus, one is a representation of 
Thanatos, Death. The figure is that of a boy, as young and 
comely as Love, but of a somewhat passive expression, and 
with a sword girt upon his thigh, which Eros never wears. 
His right hand is raised as though he were beckoning : and 
with him stand Demeter and Hermes, both divinities connected 
with the rites of the dead. Save in this instance — if it be 
an instance — Thanatos is unknown to Greek art. Hypnos 
when he appears wears a fair womanish face with closed eyes, 
scarcely distinguishable from the artistic representation of 
the Gorgon. As the moon, this last is in some sense a being 
of sleep and death. 

P. 159.— Myths and the rules of their interpretation have 
been made of late years the subject of controversy almost as 
keen as that which has raged round that primary question 
concerning the existence of nature-tvorship which we have dis- 
cussed above. In this (Xlth) and the previous chapters the 
writers have endeavoured to keep before the reader only those 
features in a myth which are essential towards the informa- 
tion we are seeking. For instance, the number of myths which 
can in any system be traced to the phenomena of the sun is 
a matter of the highest importance, as showing the influence 
which a certain set of phenomena had upon the national 
mind : but of much less significance is the question of the 
exact origin of the different features in these legendary tales. 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES. 229 

If any given tale be found to originate solely in a confusion of 
language, a mistaken, misinterpreted epithet, then it has almost 
no interest for us as an interpreter of the popular thought and 
feeling : unless indeed the shape which the story takes should 
reproduce (as it probably will) some one of the universal 
forms which seem to stand ready in the human mind for the 
moulding of its legends. 

"With regard to the particular question of sun (and other 
nature) myths and their occurrence, the question which stands 
between rival disputants is something of this sort: "All 
myths, that is, all primitive legends,' ' says one party which 
may be regarded as the Philological school, " are found, if we 
examine closely enough into the meaning of the proper 
names which occur in them, to represent originally some 
natural phenomenon, which is in nine cases out of ten (at 
least for southern nations) a story'of some part of the sun's 
daily course, some one of his innumerable aspects." "Is it 
conceivable," say their opponents (we may call these the 
Ethnologists) "that man could ever have been in such a condi- 
tion that all his attention was turned upon the workings of 
nature or upon the heavenly bodies % Far more probable is 
it, that these stories arose from a variety of natural causes, 
real traditions of some hero, reminiscences of historical events 
transformed in the mist of exaggeration, or the legacy of days 
when men had strange and almost inconceivable ideas about the 
world they lived in, when they thought animals spoke and had 
histories like men, that men could and frequently did become 
trees, and trees men, &c, &c. Indeed, so strange and sense- 
less are the notions of primitive men, that it is wasted labour 
to try and interpret them." This is a rough statement of the 
two heads of argument. The second, so far as merely negative, 
must fall before positive proof, as that the nature-myth hidden 
in an immense number of stories can be by philology satisfac- 
torily unravelled. There is, however, also positive proof on 
the other side, when many stories, which as nature-myths 
interpreted on philological principles should only have existed 
among the people of a particular linguistic family, are found 
among other races who have no real relation whatever to 
the first. 

Both these sets of facts can be adduced, and to reconcile 
them in every case would no doubt be hard. On the whole, 
however, it will perhaps, be found that, as has just been said, 



230 THE DAWN OF HISTORY. 

certain moulds for the construction of stories seem to exist 
already in the human mind, obeying some natural craving, 
and into these, as into a Procrustean bed, the myth more or 
less easily must fit. These primitive forms do not, however, 
preclude the undoubted existence — strange as such a pheno- 
menon may appear — of an especial mythopaic age connected 
with man's observations of the phenomena of nature — an age 
in which natural religions gained their foundation, and when 
the doings of the external world had a much deeper effect 
upon man's imagination than in later times they have ever 
had. 



CHAPTERS XII. AND XIII. 

Mahaffy, Prolegomena to History. 
Rawlinson, Five Monarchies. 
Tylor, Early History of Mankind. 

Lenormant, Essai sur la Propagation de V Alphabet PMnieien. 

None of the Semitic alphabets can be considered as quite 
complete ; as a complete alphabet requires a subdivision of 
sounds into their smallest divisions, and an appropriate sign for 
each of these. But none of the Semitic alphabets in their 
original forms seem to have possessed these qualifications. 
They never get nearer to the expression of vowel sounds than 
by letters which may be considered half vowels. Each of 
their consonants (in Phenician, Hebrew, Arabic) carried a 
vowel sound with it, and was therefore a syllabic sign and 
not a true letter. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Gibbon, with notes by Milman, &e. 
Latham, Germania of Tacitus. 
Id., A ] ationalities of Europe. 



NOTES AND AUTHORITIES. 231 

Curtius, Griesch. Gesch. 
Monimsen, Die unterital. Dialekten. 
Id., Mom. Gesch. 
Von Maurer, Op. cit. 

P. 206. It will be observed that (following Mommsen) 
the Etruscans are here spoken of as belonging to the Italic 
family. This is liable to grave doubts ; but the question is 
at present too unsettled to admit of satisfactory discussion 
in this place. 



THE END. 



LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILL. 



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